


The Shadow of War

by InsectKin



Series: The Shadow of War [1]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Content warning for SCIENCE, F/M, It gets dark, WRECK HIM STARKOV, but Alina is amazing, canon-level discussion of rape, eventual canon-level violence, lots more sex than canon, way more swearing than canon, which is sometimes racy but never explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-01 01:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 134,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4000816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsectKin/pseuds/InsectKin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alina's project in her last year of university has caught Ambassador Morozova's attention. He convinces her to move to Ravka to bring solar energy to the villages; her role turns out to be much larger than that.</p>
<p>This is the story of their relationship – and her revenge.</p>
<p>A modern day AU and occasional retelling. Nothing Small about this Science.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is currently ~~in progress~~ DONE! A few notes if you're just starting out:
> 
> ~~\- Check the tags for warnings! I can't guarantee nothing else will be added but this should cover the major bases.~~  
>  \- Related: this is an alarkling fic, which means that it will, at some points, be very dark.  
> \- Related: there will be greater-than-canon levels of sex because Alina wanted and deserved better. It won't get explicit.  
> \- There is more swearing than in the original trilogy. We're at war here, people.  
> \- One of my favorite things about the Grisha trilogy is the complexity of the characters and how none of them is ever completely good. This work will explore the downsides of many of the characters, but I don't intend for it to bash too hard on anyone in particular.  
> \- All the characters are sometimes bad _except for Harshaw_ who is a perfect cinnamon roll and I will fight you over that. 
> 
> <3

Alina wasn't sure why she'd come. She ate another piece of popcorn and stared at the tiger, asleep in a fake savanna. The weather was uncharacteristically mild for February but she was still vaguely concerned that they let an animal from such warm climates lounge outdoors in winter.

She looked at her watch. Even after slowly wandering through most of the zoo and buying a snack before making her way over here, she was still fifteen minutes early. 

She’d gotten the email yesterday afternoon. Ever since the New York Times had written up the work she and her lab partner had been doing, she'd started getting lots of emails — some from media outlets requesting interviews, some from companies looking to hire them. And, occasionally, acquire them, for amounts that caused her jaw to drop. 

Nikolai waved these offers away. “We’ll stick with the plan and work on this ourselves. We only have a couple months until graduation, and then we’ll have the time to give Solnyshko the attention it deserves."

It was easy for him to be dismissive — with one parent a senator and the other CEO of one of the largest corporations in America, sums that would have been more money than she’d ever dreamed of wouldn’t make a difference to him. Alina half-jokingly referred to the Lantsovs as a family of kings. (She said this once in front of Nikolai, who had only scoffed. “Please, we prefer king _makers_ .”)

Nikolai had offered to pay her salary — a generous one — for a couple years and fund the project to see if it would get enough traction, so she responded to the emails with polite refusals. But the email she got yesterday was different.

The sender made it stand out in her overflowing inbox; it was from the Ravkan ambassador. Her breath caught, though she wasn’t sure if it was more out of curiosity or fear. The email in its entirety read:

"Ms. Starkov,   
The ambassador wishes to speak with you. He'll meet you at 11 A.M. tomorrow at the downtown zoo." 

It was a command rather than a request. From the Ravkan ambassador. 

Nikolai had wanted to mention her history in the interview with the Times (“People  _love_ drama,” he’d said), but Alina had rejected the idea. She knew as well as he did that the story of a Ravkan war orphan brought to America as a screaming infant would get them better placement in the paper (“Maybe the front of the science section!” he’d pleaded. “Above the fold!”) but she wouldn’t be cast as a victim here. The story was about their work. He’d cajoled and whined for days, but in the end he’d made the reporter agree not to publish anything about her history. The reporter had no problems with that — her beat was science and she was clearly excited just to get to write about a Lantsov.

The article may not have mentioned Ravka, but Ravka had noticed. Clearly.

She told Mal about the email carefully. They’d been fighting nearly all the time now, usually about her continuing to work with Nikolai after graduation. The two had disliked each other ever since their first meeting freshman year when Mal dropped by the lab on his way back from work. A few months of classes was all it took for Mal to categorize all her classmates as hopelessly stuck up rich kids, so when she’d introduced Nikolai as her new lab partner and Nikolai extended his hand and reintroduced himself as  _Nikolai_ _Lantsov_ , she knew Mal would hate him forever. She flushed to see that the tattoo on Mal’s forearm was visible when they shook hands, and she noticed Nikolai’s eyes widen when he saw it.

“He has weird tattoos,” Nikolai had said when Mal left.

“We all have our quirks.” Alina wasn’t about to let Nikolai see her embarrassment at the “let’s cuddle” tattoo Mal had gotten after losing a drunken bet a few months prior.

Nikolai scrunched his nose. “Wouldn’t you rather be with someone whose quirks include being charming, incredibly rich, and almost too handsome?”

Three years later, not much had changed.

Mal’s reaction to the email from the ambassador was about as she expected. "What does he want? Why are you going?"

"I don't know and I'm not quite sure." 

He'd glowered and stormed out of their apartment. She feigned sleep when he stumbled into bed at two thirty, reeking of beer. She’d left in the morning before he woke.

So here she was, waiting for the Ravkan ambassador. Eating popcorn. At the zoo.

She spotted what could only be his bodyguard approaching from the other end of the tiger habitat. He was suited, scanning the crowd, walking deliberately. He caught her eye and headed towards her.

He was enormous, with a nearly comically thick neck and a chest that spoke of long hours in the embassy gym. Alina might have considered him handsome, but the fact that he looked like he could crush her with one hand made her too nervous to spend time contemplating his aesthetics.

He stopped a few feet away. " _Vy dolzhny byt devushka._ " 

She blinked a few times quickly. "Oh," she stumbled, "I'm not — er — I don't —"

He frowned. "English is okay," he said, in a way that made it clear that it was not. "I will pat you down, front, back, sides." He started before he'd finished the sentence.

The other zoogoers were staring, and Alina avoided their eyes. The bodyguard did a professional but very  _thorough_ patdown before he stood and nodded, satisfied. 

"Are you going to manhandle my popcorn, too?" Alina joked uncomfortably.

"Not necessary," he said, and started to walk away. She let out a bark of laughter and followed.

She’d researched Ambassador Morozova right after getting the email. She'd spent the better part of last night researching him, in fact, because it was surprisingly ... unfruitful. She'd found his standard embassy bio, but that said barely anything other than his tenure and that he had been a decorated General in the Ravkan military. There was a photo of him that looked like it had been scanned and enlarged from a group shot in a printed black and white newspaper, which revealed nothing other than that he appeared to be of human form.

And that was it. That was all she could find. There were mentions of his attendance at events or speeches he'd given, but nothing else. She assumed there was more about him on the Internet in Ravkan, but there was no way she'd be able to find or make much sense of it.

She turned a corner behind the bodyguard and saw the ambassador sitting on a bench. It had to be him — who else would be bent over a pile of manilla folders in a black suit at the zoo? There was a smartly-dressed woman standing beside him, talking on the phone and gesticulating wildly. As the bodyguard approached the ambassador glanced up from the folder he was reading and caught Alina’s gaze.

Her jaw dropped. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting but this was not it. He seemed almost impossibly young for an ambassador, just a few years older than she, but those important few years where the last vestiges of baby fat drop away. His jaw and cheekbones were sharp, skin pale against his jet black hair, his eyes a piercing grey. He might be the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

The ambassador stood and glanced at his bodyguard, who grumbled a few words in Ravkan. The ambassador only nodded mildly before turning to her.

"Ms. Starkov." He dipped his head in greeting. “Alina, please,” she mumbled, bowing her own head slightly in return.  

"Let's walk," he suggested, already moving in the direction she’d come. She had to run a couple steps to catch up, but once she had he slowed to a stroll. She glanced backwards to see the bodyguard trailing a respectful distance behind them, and vaguely wondered if he ever stopped scowling.

They walked in silence past the small tree where the tiger remained sleeping and turned a corner. A child wailed.

"Ravka is a small country." The ambassador spoke easily, fluently, only the slight clip of his cadence betraying that English was not his native language. "We don’t have the natural resources of some, and we are surrounded by countries hostile to us. The last few decades have been difficult — civil war followed by battles with our neighbors to the north and the south. We have invested in war, and as a consequence, our people are tired. They are poor. They are beginning to lose hope."

Alina blinked. She hadn’t spent much time with ambassadors, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t typically how they spoke about their country.

“Our terrain is full of mountains and valleys. People live isolated from one another, and as our neighbors squeeze our airspace and cut off trade over land, it is hard for us to provide our people with the things they need. This is where we are now. This is the situation we have to deal with.”

He led them towards a jaguar that was pacing in an enclosure far too small for an animal of its size before stopping and turning to her. From this close, she noticed a faint web of thin white scars across his face. His expression was impassive but his eyes focused intensely on hers. “Tell me about your work _._ ”

Alina swallowed. “What … would you like to know?”

“You’ve developed a solar cell that is thin, flexible, and made of materials far more common than have previously been used.” She nodded. “Is the work yours.” 

“Excuse me?”

“You have a partner, you work in a lab. How much of the work was yours.” 

She wondered if he’d been chosen as an ambassador in spite of his bluntness or because of it. “It’s been a collaborative effort.”

His jaw tensed. “Are you indispensable to the project.” 

She could never have done it alone. She knew it was Nikolai’s humor and persistence — not to mention his family’s contribution the lab that allowed her to make just enough to pay her tuition —that had kept her sane throughout the long nights of modifying, testing, scrapping, and trying again. But she also knew that the ideas had mostly been hers, that she knew how the light interacted with the materials and how they trapped the energy almost like she knew how to breathe. And Nikolai did not. She was grateful for his companionship, for the ease of working with him. She’d never admitted that the work was hers to anyone, not even to herself. “Yes,” she whispered.

The ambassador gave a small nod. “Tell me more about it.”

“Most available cells cap out at about 35% energy efficiency. Ours outperforms them.”

“By how much.”

“Five, six percent,” she said, shrugging.

He raised an eyebrow. “But you think it can do better.”

These were hopes she’d had, hopes that she and Nikolai had only shared with each other for fear that saying them aloud might break some spell. But the research she’d done, the equations she had come up with, supported her idea, even if it wasn’t yet a reality. “I know it can.” 

His mouth twitched, and she realized his was the closest he’d come to smiling. “How much better.”

“Double.” She took a deep breath. “More than double.”

“How close can you get to the limit suggested by Carnot's Theorem?” She let out a laugh — he’d done his homework.

“I think if we’re going to get close to 85% energy conversion with a panel that tracks the sun, Solnyshko is how we’ll do it.”

He nodded again and resumed walking. She fell into step alongside him.

_“Solnyshko_ ,” he said, slowly, and Alina shivered. The word sounded, when he said it, like hearing her adoptive parents tucking her in at night nearly fourteen years ago. It sounded like she’d felt as a teenager in stolen moments when Mal held her naked in bed and whispered pet names in her ear. It sounded like she’d meant it to sound, when she’d affectionately begun referring to their solar project as  _little sun_ . It sounded like a caress. It sounded a little like hope.

“Your adoptive parents, they spoke to you in Ravkan?” 

“Sometimes. They were first generation immigrants but came over when they were young.”

“But you haven’t spoken it since you entered the foster system.”

“No.”

She’d been only eight when the couple who brought her to America died and she was moved into a group home. Even at eight she was already fascinated with energy, and her parents had cultivated her interest with science projects, building batteries together. She was excelling in school, and despite her age would have been a great candidate for adoption. But she quickly learned that there isn’t much of a market for adopting a kid whose parents have already died twice.

It was only a few months later that she met Mal. She started helping him with his homework, and he would sneak her treats from the pantry in return. They became friends, and though other kids moved in and out of their lives they always seemed to end up together. At sixteen she finally worked up the courage to kiss him, and when she was admitted to the best engineering school in the country he got a job so he could move them into an apartment near campus the day he aged out of the foster system. He’d been so proud of her. Things had been good. She still wasn’t sure what had happened.

They passed the aviary. There were flightless birds, ones with clipped wings. There was a net over the opening to the sky to keep the unclipped ones from flying away.

“I want you to come to Ravka and develop  _Solnyshko_ .” 

Alina started. “What? Why?” 

“We need a source of power that is durable, easy to make, can be transported to villages and doesn’t rely on coal and oil we don’t have. We’re far enough north that most of the year standard solar power just isn’t an option. We can give you the materials and collaborators to make this. A factory, when it’s ready.” 

“Why in Ravka? Why not just wait until I develop it here?”

“We need it now. We don’t have time to wait for you and the Lantsov boy to figure out how to set up a lab and develop a product, and we won't be able to buy enough at whatever markup a company that would buy the design would charge.” He turned to her. “Nikolai isn’t the scientist you are. What happens when he loses interest after spending years on the same project? You need funding that won’t disappear because a rich boy decides it’s easier to work on Mommy’s staff instead.”

It occurred to her that the ambassador was right. She stood to lose everything if the business failed and Nikolai would lose nothing. It also occurred to Alina that the ambassador may actually know Senator Lantsov. 

“Come run your own lab. For your own people.”

She blinked.  _My people_ . She’d never had people before. Unless you counted Mal.

_Oh._  “I can’t just pack up and go to Ravka. I can’t leave my boyfriend.”

“Why.”

“Why can’t I leave him?” Alina sputtered. “He … needs me.”

The ambassador seemed to ponder this for a moment. “You  _can_ leave him, you know.”

“ _What?_ ” Alina turned, furious. He glanced her way before turning his attention back to the road ahead.

“You can leave him. You’re unhappy.” 

She spoke through gritted teeth. “You met me ten minutes ago — don’t act like you know everything about me.”

He shrugged. “I don’t. But I learned enough when you answered ‘he needs me’ instead of ‘I love him.’”

She swallowed the bad taste in her mouth. She did still love Mal, probably, but she hadn’t had the thought in a long time. She held on to Mal as a piece of her past. He clung to her like a lifeboat.

They stopped in front of a spider money who stared fixedly at Alina. 

“I’m flying back to Ravka on Thursday. We’ll pick you up that morning at seven.”

“ _Thursday_ ,” Alina gasped. “You expect me to, after one conversation, pack up and leave everything in three days?”

“Why not.”

This was infuriating. “Other than my plan of developing this with Nikolai, and my boyfriend, I don’t know — midterms and finals?”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone suitable to proctor them for you.” 

She exhaled loudly. "My student loans."

"We can take care of those."

“I don’t even have a passport.”

His lifted an eyebrow, and she realized that she’d as good as told him that she would go. “I’m the Ravkan ambassador. This isn't a problem.” 

A short distance away, the woman who had been on the phone when they’d first met was approaching. The bodyguard stepped towards the ambassador and said a few low words in his ear. He nodded as the woman joined them, then turned to Alina. 

“Seven Thursday morning, Alina,” he said, voice soft, letting his hand rest lightly on her shoulder.

She watched him walk away, flanked to either side by the bodyguard and the woman. 

“Wait!” she called, and they turned back to her, the bodyguard still scowling, the ambassador’s face unreadable. 

"Why —" She wasn’t sure which question to ask. Why her? Why now? Why …

"Why a zoo?" she settled on, finally, aware of how lame it sounded. She tried to control a blush as the bodyguard clearly stifled a groan.

There was a minuscule twitch in the ambassador’s facial muscles that she thought might be amusement. "Zoos are good reminders." 

Alina watched him walk away before turning back to the spider monkey. It blinked a few times, eyes wide, slow.

She thought she understood what the ambassador had meant.


	2. Chapter 2

The conversation with Nikolai was not going well. He'd been excited when she had shown up at his apartment that evening; he had opened a bottle of champagne to toast the followup interview in the Washington Post. ("It's no Wall Street Journal," he'd acknowledged, "but that doesn't mean it's not worth celebrating.")   


The champagne flutes sat untouched on his coffee table. Alina sat on the couch and watched him pace.  


"This is crazy," he said, for the tenth time. He turned and walked to the other end of his living room, running a hand through his hair, before turning to glare at her. "Completely crazy."  


Alina nodded. It  _was_  crazy. There was no way around that. She'd spent much of the day pacing her own apartment with a similar train of thought. She couldn't believe she was considering leaving school in her last semester; after all the hours studying and all the work she'd put in, part of her thought she was crazy for even considering it. But part of her knew why she wanted to, knew that she had buried herself in studies and homework and Solnyshko and that she felt so comfortable working on equations and energy conversion because she didn't feel comfortable anywhere else. She liked her classmates well enough, but she was different from them and could tell that they knew it, too. And she was different from Mal, as frequently as he insisted otherwise. They'd spent more than half their lives together, but there was a part of her she knew he'd never understand.  


After a few hours of fretting she'd sat down at the table and pulled out her textbooks, hoping to lose herself in the equations and diagrams as she had many nights over the last few years. She'd finished almost all her requirements for graduation and was only taking a couple classes this semester — including one from the professor whose lab she was working in — so her workload was light, but she had a problem set due Wednesday that seemed like a good candidate for distraction. It didn't work.

She'd texted Nikolai to let him know she was coming over, and when she arrived had told him she was considering going to Ravka.

He continued to glare at her, and she looked down at the floor, scrunching her bare toes into the plush carpet. It was not a typical off-campus apartment, and though she would never have expected him to live the way most undergrads did she was still surprised at how well put together the whole thing was the first time she saw it.

"Who decorated this for you?" she'd gasped.

It was the first time she'd seen Nikolai look offended. "I happen to have excellent taste in furnishings," he'd sniffed, before breaking into a grin. "Also a little help from my family's interior designer, but that's almost a given."

Now, he sunk into one of the chairs that on that visit he'd informed her was considered _sustainable warm modern_  and rested his chin on his palm.  


"What did Mal say about this?"

Alina blinked. Nikolai rarely mentioned Mal — so rarely, in fact, that she sometimes thought he liked to pretend she didn't have a boyfriend at all. He _definitely_  never asked what Mal thought.  


And she didn't have a good answer. "I ... haven't told him." A few years ago she would have called Mal the minute she left the zoo, would have gone over every detail of the meeting with him. But he hadn't been home when she'd gotten back from meeting with the ambassador, and he didn't come home all afternoon. She found she was relieved. She hated the feeling.

She expected Nikolai to be surprised, but he just nodded, eyes distant. It was another few moments before he spoke.

"You don't have to run to Ravka to leave him."

" _What?"_   


"You have options, Alina. It's not go to Ravka or be trapped with Mal for the rest of your life." 

She could not believe that she was being told what to do about Mal for the second time that day. "This is none of your business."

He smiled sadly. "On the contrary, it's a lot of my business. You've chosen to stay with Mal for your entire college career, which is your prerogative. But you're not fooling me into thinking you're happy — I see how you linger at the lab and how you brace yourself before leaving. If you're not fooling me, you're not fooling Mal. Are you really fooling yourself?"

Alina fought the urge to squirm. "I owe Mal a lot. And I'm not going to discuss our relationship with you."

"Fine." He picked up one of the flutes and swirled the champagne gently, watching the bubbles fight their way to the surface. "I can't do Solnyshko without you," he said quietly.

"I know."

He nodded, still looking down, then leaned back and sighed.

"I don't expect you to take me up on it, but this apartment has three bedrooms. You can have one of them. Two, if you like."

She smiled. "What if I want all three?"

"I'm willing to make some sacrifices." He studied her. "You're going to do this, aren't you?"

She rubbed her thumb over the scar on her palm. "I think so." 

He sighed, but then raised his glass. "To Ravka's prodigal daughter," he toasted. "Bringing light to the people."

She picked up her flute and gently clinked it against his. "To Solnyshko."  


"Solnyshko," he repeated, and drained his glass.

* * *

Alina was working on the problem set again the next morning when Mal came into the living room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was shirtless, giving her a clear view of many of his tattoos. She saw the dagger down his side that he had gotten when they went to get inked for his eighteenth birthday. Looking at him felt like looking at a scrapbook of their relationship. Her stomach twisted.

"We need to talk."

Mal glanced up, surprised, it seemed, to see her there. _As if he thought she'd already gone._  


"I'm late," he mumbled, sorting through a pile of clothes on one of the chairs. He found a clean shirt, tugged it over his head, and headed for the door. 

There was a time when she would have gotten up to kiss him goodbye. He would have kissed her back, and he would have ended up much later for work than he was now. This morning she just watched him walk out the door. 

She could tell him some other time. She hadn't really decided yet, anyway.

* * *

But come Wednesday evening, she still hadn't talked to Mal. He'd been getting home long after she had gone to sleep, and would be gone when she got back from classes in the afternoon. She texted him a couple times to see when he'd be home, but his responses were vague and unenthusiastic. 

Maybe he wanted her gone, too.

More likely, she thought, he didn't want to hear that she was leaving.

They'd been drifting towards this for a long time, but whenever she tried to have a real discussion with him he would pull the same disappearing act, spending long days at work and nights out with friends to avoid a conversation. When they finally saw each other a week later, she'd be so glad to have him back that they'd fall into bed and pretend nothing had happened.

She finished putting the last of her books in a box, and taped it up. All told, she had three boxes she was bringing to Ravka — one of clothes, two of books — and a small backpack with a couple textbooks and her worn out computer. 

As much as Alina had deliberated over whether or not she would leave, the ambassador had clearly known what the outcome would be. Her advisor had called Alina into her office yesterday, saying she'd gotten an email from the university president asking her to arrange for Alina to have her final exam proctored.

"From ... Ravka?" her advisor had said, arching an eyebrow. Alina nodded. 

The professor twisted her mouth. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" She asked the question in such a way that made it seem like she was pretty sure undergrads _never_  knew what they were doing.   


"I hope so," Alina replied, and her advisor nodded.

"Good luck to you out there."

Alina had returned her library books that afternoon and cleared out her space at the lab under Nikolai's disapproving stare. Now all her worldly possessions were packed in three boxes that she dragged towards the door. 

And still no Mal.

Alina texted him again, glancing at her phone every few minutes but not really expecting a response. She sat down and started writing a letter.

She'd already been up for an hour when her alarm went off at 6:05 the next morning. Mal had come home late again — no matter the situation, he always did come home, loyal if nothing else — and one whiff told her that he was going to be in no condition to have any sort of meaningful discussion. 

She rolled over and watched him sleep. His hair fell across his face, and in rest she recognized the eight-year-old she'd met over a dozen years ago. She gently traced her finger over the tattoo of a circuit he'd gotten to celebrate her acceptance to the school of engineering, remembering how they'd gone to several tattoo artists before finding one she felt would be able to reproduce the image she'd drawn without mistakes. 

He stirred under her touch and she drew her hand away, sliding out of the covers carefully so as not to disturb him any further. She went into their bathroom and brushed her teeth in the faint pre-dawn light from the window. She pulled on the clothes she'd left out the night before, then packed her pajamas and toothbrush in her backpack.

She bent over the bed and kissed Mal lightly on the forehead. His breathing remained steady and he didn't wake. She was grateful.

She placed the letter she'd written the night before, along with the cash she'd withdrawn from her now empty bank account, on the table. She hoped he'd forgive her, someday. 

She hoped that someday she'd forgive him, too.

* * *

She anticipated the boxes being hard to carry down to the street, and though the boxes with the books were heavy she had all her belongings by the curb at 6:20. The city was quiet and cold, a few tendrils of sunlight starting to snake their way over the tops of buildings. She sat on a bench and watched her breath make small clouds that shone as the rays hit them.

A few minutes later a black SUV parked across the street. Alina stood as the door opened, and started when Nikolai stepped out.

He crossed the street and stopped just in front of her. He nodded at the boxes she had stacked on the sidewalk. "I can load those into the car and have you moved into my place in ten minutes."

Alina lifted a corner of her mouth and shook her head. Nikolai sighed. "It was worth a try." He sat down on the bench. "In that case, I thought you might want a friend to wait with." She sat next to him and twined her fingers with his. His hands were warm, more rough than she expected. They sat in silence as the sun rose.

At seven exactly, two black SUVs followed by three black limousines turned onto the narrow block. Alina and Nikolai both stood, unknotting their stiff fingers, as the cars stopped right in front of them.

" _Shit_ ," said Nikolai, quietly. They'd both half-expected that no one would come.   


The door of the middle limousine opened, and the same bodyguard she'd seen at the zoo got out. He looked at the boxes, frowning.

"These are your luggage?"

Alina nodded, embarrassed. She had never needed suitcases before. The bodyguard began loading her boxes into the trunk, and the ambassador exited the open door.

He stood, his black coat reaching down to his knees, and let his gaze flicker over the two of them. She saw his jaw clench faintly in the morning shadows.

"Alina," he said, nodding to her. He turned to Nikolai and bent his head stiffly. "Mr. Lanstov, I presume." 

Nikolai nodded back. "Ambassador."

The trunk door slammed shut and the bodyguard moved beside the ambassador. The four of them stood in silence for a moment.

"Are you coming, Alina?"

Alina exhaled, letting the fog of her breath linger in front of her. "Yes."

She turned to Nikolai, who folded her into his arms, positioning his mouth next to her ear.

"I can have a plane sent to bring you back. Any time. Just say the word."

She returned his hug. Past his shoulder she saw the window to the bedroom she and Mal had shared for the past nearly four years. It was dark and still.

Nikolai let go and she turned to the ambassador, who held out his hand. She took it, his cool fingers wrapping around her palm as he helped her into the limousine. She slid to one side as the ambassador and then the bodyguard came in after her, closing the door behind them. 

She watched Nikolai through the tinted window as the caravan drove away. He stood, hands in his pockets, morning sun in his hair. Then they turned a corner, and he disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it here I hope you're enjoying it! There's a story arc now, so to be continued ... ~*~


	3. Chapter 3

As they turned onto the freeway, the ambassador slid from beside Alina to the seat facing her. The woman she'd seen the first day sat next to him, leaving Alina and the bodyguard facing forwards while the other two faced back. The woman had been typing furiously on her phone since Alina got in the car, occasionally rolling her eyes. Once the ambassador was seated, she put her phone down and reached into the zippered pocket of the bag next to her, producing two passports. She handed them to Alina and winked.

"Two passports, ready to go. Even signed them for you.”

Alina took them, brushing her fingers gently over the embossed covers. The American passport showed an eagle, proudly clutching arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. The other had Ravkan on it that Alina assumed declared that it, too, was a passport.

She opened them up and saw her university ID photo had been used in both passports. She remembered the day she went to get that picture taken, clutching Mal's hand as he stood in line with her to take the photo. Her smile was big, overly anxious, mid-way to a laugh – Mal had chosen the second before the shudder snapped to make a face at her from behind the photographer.

The ambassador pulled a stack of manilla folders onto his lap, thumbing through until he found what he was looking for. He opened it and began to read.

The woman was back on her phone, fingers flying over the screen in what Alina imagined was either ten simultaneous text conversations or the next great Ravkan novel. The woman her long red hair behind her without disrupting her typing at all. "Stop staring, Ivan," she said, eyes still on her phone. Her voice was light, almost a tease.

The bodyguard groaned. "I am not staring."

She glanced up from her typing before turning her attention back to the phone. "Yeah, you are."

"I am sitting, looking ahead. You are also ahead." 

She flashed a grin at her screen. "Sure, Ivan."

They continued driving for some time, the woman's fingers tapping on the phone, the ambassador sorting through papers and occasionally stopping to scribble something in a margin. Ivan had deliberately shifted his gaze out the window. Alina grasped her passports as if she was afraid they would jump out of her hands.

There was one final tap and the woman locked her screen. She leaned back in her seat.

"You look nervous." 

Alina shrugged. "I don't get whisked away in a black limousine every day."

She smiled and indicated the man across from her with a nod of her head. "You don't need to worry about him, he won't hurt you. He seems tough but on the inside he's just a big ol' softie." 

Ivan kept his eyes trained outside the window. "I hope, Genya, that you are not talking about me."

She laughed. "You think I'm talking about the ambassador?"

The ambassador continued to read and mark papers, apparently oblivious to the discussion around him. Alina saw Ivan's shoulders tense, then release. He mumbled something in Ravkan.

"What was that, honey?"

He just stared out the window, apparently thinking better of his response. The car stopped and the ambassador glanced up. The driver opened the door and they exited the limousine.

All five cars were pulled in a semicircle on a runway, suits standing next to them, speaking quietly. Genya shook her hair behind her and smoothed her skirt. Ivan moved towards two men who seemed to be pilots, spoke with them briefly, then turned and motioned for the three of them to get on the plane.

It wasn't large, as planes went, but it was spacious inside with roomy, plush seats. The ambassador sat at one end of a large table, and Genya indicated the seat across from him for Alina, who slid her backpack onto the floor and sat down. Ivan boarded and Genya stood, speaking Ravkan with him in a low voice. Out the window Alina saw some of the suited guards from the other cars putting her boxes and other more expensive looking luggage in the belly of the plane. None of them seemed to be getting ready to board, though the plane could easily seat all the security they'd arrived with.

She looked up and found the ambassador staring at her.

"They're not coming with us?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Those are the embassy's. These," he cocked his head towards Genya and Ivan, "are mine."

Alina swallowed, unsure of the distinction. She wondered uncomfortably what that made her.

Ivan walked to the back of the plane and Genya sat down in the seat next to Alina. Alina tapped her foot on the floor, and Genya looked at her carefully.

“Have you ever flown before?”

“They didn’t bring me to America on a boat.”

Genya raised an eyebrow. “Not in a long time, huh?”

Alina leaned back in her seat and exhaled. “No.”

Genya reached over and squeezed Alina’s hand. Alina startled a little at the touch and was rewarded with a wink. “You’ll be fine.”

The plane door closed, and the suits that were milling around the runway piled into their cars and backed them off the tarmac. Ivan sat and put on his seatbelt. The ambassador pulled out his manilla folders and began going through the papers again as a flight attendant came and handed out four bottles of water. 

Genya rolled her eyes dramatically at the ambassador. “You and water on planes,” she moaned.

He was writing a note in the margin and didn't look up. “The air is dry and you will get dehydrated if you don’t drink enough. I've asked the flight attendant to bring water every hour. I need you all presentable and functioning tomorrow — we have official Ravkan business to take care of when we land.”

"Only you can make drinking water sound like a patriotic duty." Genya opened the cap of the bottle with a sigh and lifted it in front of her. “For Ravka,” she said, taking a gulp of water.

Alina took a long drink of her own. “For Ravka,” she whispered.

* * *

The earth fell away from the airplane and Alina stared out the window, transfixed as the houses turned from buildings into miniatures into dots before disappearing completely as they flew into and then out of the clouds. The sun had risen fully and at the winter angle it was almost painfully bright. Once the plane evened out, Ivan moved a few rows back. The flight attendant came around with coffee and Alina gratefully took a cup. She hadn’t slept well and was too anxious to sleep, but thought she might soon need any help she could get.

Mal would be awake now and had probably found her letter. She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried not to imagine what his reaction would be. It felt awful, leaving him, but she didn't regret it.  _It's done. Time to move on._

The ambassador was still going through his manilla folders, and Genya had produced a stack of mail, shaking her head at every other letter. Alina pulled out her textbook and flipped to the chapter the next week’s problem set would be based on. No reason not to get started now.

The flight attendant served lunch a few hours later, and Alina was shocked at the elaborateness of the meal. They were served warm rolls and butter and a salad of greens that she wasn't sure the name of, followed by a pasta rolled in a light cream sauce and salmon neatly arranged on top of asparagus. Genya clearly relished the service, and Ivan, who had returned to his seat for the meal, inhaled everything put in front of him. The flight attendant came around with wine but the ambassador raised an eyebrow and Genya declined with a small sigh. 

"Is this what food in Ravka is like?" Alina asked, a little awestruck. This was certainly the best meal she'd ever had.

"All of it," Genya said quickly.

"Really?"

"No." 

Ivan snorted, the corners of his mouth turning up. Genya raised her eyebrows, turned to Alina, and mouthed "I made him laugh!" Alina suppressed a giggle of her own.

The flight attendant came by to clear their plates, then returned with more coffee and dessert. Alina picked at her pot-de-crème after the meal. The ambassador carefully sliced and ate a peach.

Alina was on the last problem of next week's homework when Genya pulled out a bottle of bright green nail polish and began to paint her nails. She painted carefully, managing to avoid getting any on her skin in a way that Alina could never dream of doing herself. After the first coat, Ivan groaned from the back of the plane.

Genya shot Alina a mischievous look. “He hates when I paint my nails on flights. Sensitive to smells, apparently. But really, there’s no excuse for landing with chipped polish.” She blew lightly on her nails, then pulled out the brush for another coat. “Want me to paint yours when I’m done?”

“No, thanks.” 

The flight attendant came by with more water a few moments later. The ambassador looked at them expectantly, so Alina opened her bottle of water and then Genya's. The woman sighed, aware of her still-wet nails, and gingerly took a sip. The ambassador put away his folders, stood, and walked through a door in the back of the plane.

"Office," Genya offered. "It has a phone."

"What do you do for the ambassador?"

"I'm his Chief of Staff. I make sure things get done, make sure he shows up where he's supposed to be with the right preparation, make sure that he's on the right people's schedules at the right times. I also do a lot of yelling at people on the phone." She unscrewed the cap of the top coat, painting a clear layer on her nails. "And I hear you're going to solve Ravka's power problem."

"Going to try to, anyway."

Genya blew on her nails and shook her hand lightly. "The ambassador wouldn't have brought you if he didn't know you could. Sure you don’t want your nails done?” Alina nodded, and Genya screwed the top back on the polish. “Suit yourself. I’m going to go a row back and sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day.” 

Alina tapped her pencil on her notebook. How could she get solar power to an entire country? There were so many problems other than the energy efficiency that she didn't have any experience addressing – storing the energy absent an established or reliable power grid, for one, which is where many solar projects struggled. She would have thought she'd be intimidated by the task ahead, scared – and maybe the wide-eyed Alina who showed up on campus four years ago would have been. But while on paper she wasn't close to qualified to lead the solar effort in Ravka, something about it also felt exactly  _right_ . Maybe that's what the ambassador had seen. 

She rubbed her thumb over the scar on her palm and stretched, glancing out the window. They were flying East and already at the beginning of the sunset. She pushed her chair back and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, there were three bottles of water in a neat row next to her. Ivan was snoring from somewhere in the back of the plane and Genya’s seat remained empty. The ambassador was back, huddled over those papers again. Alina flushed, suddenly embarrassed that he had seen her sleeping. He glanced up at her as she opened one of the bottles of water. 

“We’ll be landing in a few hours, mid-morning in Ravka.”

"What then?"

"I'll have you set up in your room. You can spend the day sightseeing — probably good to have spent some time in the country before the state dinner."

"State dinner?"

"There's a dinner in honor of a new Minister tonight, and the president has formally invited us to attend."

Alina paled. "I've never been to a state dinner."

"You'll do fine." It was a statement more than a reassurance. Almost a command.

Genya plopped into the seat next to Alina and rubbed her eyes. "Are we there yet?"

"A few more hours."

She nodded. Alina readied herself for a witty remark but the woman remained silent. The flight attendant came by with water and Genya drank it without complaining. 

* * *

The ocean outside the window had given way to land and Alina had gotten her first view of Ravka in twenty-two years. Most of what she had seen was snow. Looking out over Os Alta from the window of her room, she saw more of the same.

It had been bitterly cold when they landed – even in her heaviest coat Alina was chilled to the bones running from the plane into a waiting car. As they drove from the airport into the city, she stared in awe at the heavy stone buildings coated in a thick layer of snow. Few people were outside, and the ones that were were so heavily bundled as to be almost unrecognizable as human.

The ambassador had sent Genya with Alina to see her to her room and take her around the city, though Alina wasn't sure going outside was the best idea. They'd walked through a large building, Genya merrily greeting and chatting in Ravkan with the people they passed before getting to Alina's new room. It was a spacious in the style of a large dormitory, with a bed, desk, a small vanity, and an attached bathroom. Genya joined her at the window with a contented sigh.

"Another beautiful day in Os Alta. The sun is shining, the snow is falling only gently, and the best part, of course, is that we are indoors." She grinned at Alina. "How does it feel to be back?"

_Back_ . Alina wasn't sure what she'd expected. She hadn't been imagining her return like a movie with the resurfacing of a long-lost memory or a distant cousin bursting into the room. She had braced herself to be disappointed. But she wasn't, quite. She couldn't put her finger on the feeling.

"It feels ... " she shrugged, unable to finish the sentence.

"Overwhelming? Jet laggy? Like home?" Genya suggested. "Cold?"

Alina laughed at that. "Definitely cold."

"We have dinner at six, and Ivan will drop off your luggage sometime before then. I'm guessing this is the warmest outfit you have?" Alina nodded. "Then we're going to have to go shopping. I've been given a relocation wardrobe budget for you so let's spend it. You can get to know this beautiful city from the warm interiors of its shopping malls."

Alina was relieved that a car picked them up from an underground parking garage and that they were dropped off in one at the mall. As they entered, she was struck by how familiar everything was — not because she had any memories of Ravka, but because, other than the writing, the mall looked like it had been transplanted from America. She mentioned as much to Genya, who shrugged. "We had to rebuild most of the city after the civil war, so something like half of Os Alta was built in the last eight years. You'll recognize a lot of the architecture."

They walked into a store, and Genya chatted with the woman working there while tossing coats at Alina. When she was satisfied they had enough, she lead Alina to a mirror in the back, put the coats on a chair, and began handing them to her one at a time.

Alina shrugged on the first coat and zipped it up, immediately and completely drowning in it. Genya scrunched her nose. "I think not that one."

"How is it that you speak such American English?" Alina asked, handing Genya the first coat and taking the next from her.

“It’s not that hard — look at how many Americans do it.” Genya winked. “I spent a lot of my childhood with an American family in Ravka. My mom worked for them, and when she died, I took over. Cleaning. Doing their homework, which it turns out I was great at. No, not that one either." She gave Alina a third coat. "I won't bore you with details, but the ambassador came for dinner one night and realized what was happening. He was a couple years in the army at that point, just beginning to make a name for himself, but he got me out of there the next day. Drafted me two years early, into his division."

"What division was that?"

"The one that ended the civil war." Genya's gaze swept her up and down, and she spoke before Alina could ask another question. "I think this is good. How does it feel?"

Alina looked at herself in the mirror. It was a long black coat, with faux-fur trim around the hood. A sash in the middle tied it tight around her waist and indoors it was almost unbearably hot. "I think I'm sweating already."

"Great, we'll take it."

* * *

A few hours and most of her relocation wardrobe budget later they were back in Alina's room getting ready for the state dinner. Genya was picking out the new clothes that Alina would wear, and Alina was pacing nervously. The sun had long since set and the city twinkled outside the window.

"I'm not sure why an engineer would need to show up at a state dinner. Besides, the jet lag is really starting to hit me." It wasn't a lie. After the adrenaline rush of the exceptionally long day Alina's body was starting to beg for sleep.

"Don't let the ambassador hear you say that — I'll be forced to drink even more water on the next flight." Genya held up one of the shirts and a pair of slacks they'd gotten and sent Alina into the bathroom to change.

Alina took off her t-shirt and slipped on the new shirt, buttoning it carefully. "I don't speak Ravkan," she called from the bathroom. "I'm not sure what I'll even do there."

"The president and first lady never pass up an opportunity to show off their English. Besides, most of state dinners is sitting around and looking pretty." Alina exited the bathroom and Genya motioned for her to sit on a chair she'd pulled in front of the vanity. She pulled out a brush and some hairpins and pinned Alina's hair in a partial updo. She swiped some mascara on Alina's eyelids, gave her a little blush and lipstick, and held her at an arm's length.

"That will do nicely." She squeezed Alina's shoulder. "I'm going to get dressed. Then we'll go introduce the people to Ravka's  _solnyshko._ "

* * *

The dinner began smoothly, if uneventfully. The ambassador had arrived with Ivan and escorted Genya and Alina to the president's palace. It was a sprawling mansion full of golden angels hanging from every wall and columns gratuitously placed around the exterior and corridors. It was one of the ugliest buildings Alina had ever seen. 

They were ushered into a large room with a few dozen other formally dressed people. Alina's first thought was how much they all  _looked_  like her. Not like relatives, exactly, just ... similar. The shapes of their faces and the texture of their hair were like hers. In America she'd always struggled buying clothes that looked right — there was something about her skin tone that just didn't work with many popular colors — but earlier in the day when she was shopping with Genya, everything she tried suited her beautifully. 

She had come halfway around the world, found herself in a room of people she didn't know who were speaking a language she didn't understand, and she felt like she belonged more than she had since she was a child. She blinked a few times rapidly.

A tuxedoed waiter came by with a tray of champagne flutes. Genya helped herself to one and Alina followed suit, taking a small sip. Genya downed hers in one gulp and put it back on the tray before the server moved on.

"We're in the thick of Ravkan politics now, so let me get you up to speed. That man," Genya nodded some distance away to an older man, dressed with a red cummerbund, "is the president's uncle, Amigdor Brodvan. He's fine although relatively incompetent, so he's mostly given trivial assignments. He usually brings vodka. That woman over there is the foreign minister, which means she primarily spends her time unsuccessfully negotiating with Fjerda and Shu Han. The main criteria for the job is being able to keep calm under pressure — the assassination rate for Ravkan foreign ministers is high."

"There's an  _assassination_   _rate_ ? How many of them have been assassinated?" 

"Out of the last five Foreign Ministers, all of them." Genya cast her a sideways glance and gave a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, though, we haven't had an engineer assassinated since the end of the civil war."

"That wasn't that long ago," Alina pointed out.

Genya just shrugged, picking up another glass of champagne as a server moved by. "It's a tough neighborhood."

A murmur rippled through the crowd as another couple walked in the door. " _Prezident_  and  _Ledi_ Vakhrov," Genya whispered before handing Alina her empty champagne flute and taking her phone out of her clutch.

Alina glanced around as Genya typed furiously. Ivan detached himself from the ambassador, who was busy speaking to two severe looking suits, and came over to where Alina stood. A few moments later the ambassador joined them, putting a hand on Genya's shoulder. She sighed and lowered her phone. 

Alina looked up to see the first lady coming towards them. She stopped a few feet away and the ambassador bowed his head. " _Ledi_ Vakhrov." 

She pulled a corner of her mouth up. "I wasn't aware that you were back, Ambassador."

"We just arrived this morning." 

She glanced at the rest of them, pretending to notice them for the first time. "How lovely," she said, her voice cold. "My husband must have forgotten to tell me." Her eyes settled on Alina's hands as Alina flushed, realizing she was still holding Genya's champagne flute in addition to her own. A server came by and she put the empty glass on the tray.

"Morozova! Welcome back." The president walked over, enthusiastically extending a hand which the ambassador shook. The president had a short black beard and somewhat more girth than Alina had imagined. He seemed thrilled. He shook hands with Ivan and reached for Genya. She held out a hand and he kissed her knuckles.

The ambassador stepped back and put a hand on Alina's shoulder. " _Prezident_ , this is Alina Starkov, the engineer I told you about. She will be developing solar power for our villages." 

The president turned towards Alina. His eyes were small and they raked over her in a way that made her uncomfortable. "Wonderful, wonderful." He seemed about to say something else, but at that moment the far doors opened up to reveal a dining room with a number of round, elegantly set tables. The president excused himself, put an arm around his wife, and led her into the dining hall.

Genya read the placecards and indicated to Alina where to sit, settling in next to her and across the table from Ivan and the ambassador. A couple sat next to Alina and the woman introduced herself in English as the minister of transportation. She had a daughter in America and she and Alina spent the rather elaborate meal talking about schools and the challenges of providing transportation in a country with Ravka's geography. Genya picked at her food quietly, but flashed Alina a smile whenever she looked over. The president's laugh could be heard across the room.

Alina glanced across the table to see the ambassador looking at her, unembarrassed when she met his gaze. Alina wasn't beautiful by most standards, but she was striking — her features carefully defined in a way that she was coming to realize was distinctly Ravkan. Men liked to stare at her, and for the most part it didn't phase her. But the ambassador didn't stare at her with the interest she was accustomed to. He was looking at her like there was something that didn't quite fit. Like he was trying to figure her out.

She turned away and took a sip of the champagne she'd been slowly drinking for the last hour. She didn't think she wanted to be figured out, but a part of her was curious what he saw.

* * *

Back in her room, beyond her window, the lights of the city twinkled softly against the snow. There was a country out there,  _her_  country, that needed her to harness the thin rays of winter sun. There were villages and valleys waiting in darkness. Beyond those villages lay two oceans and a continent separating her from the life she'd had the day before. She could feel the cold winter wind through her fingertips that she rested lightly on the glass.

She crawled into bed and was asleep in a matter of seconds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh sorry for the long delay between updates! The good news is I have drafts of a few more chapters now so I intend to get back to updating at a faster clip. Thanks for sticking with me – let me know what you think ~*~

It was cold. It was so, so cold. Alina thought she'd been cold in her winters at college, but she'd never felt cold like this. Even in her new winter coat, hat, gloves, and boots her bones were aching. She walked behind Ivan, attempting to use his bulk to block the wind.

She'd woken up that morning, heart racing, to the sound of a loud bang. The banging had resumed before she'd realized it was someone knocking — hard — on her door. She'd pushed hair out of her face as she yanked the doorknob. 

"Ivan," she'd said, startled, pulling on the neck of her pajamas that had fallen off her shoulder. 

He had frowned. "You sleep late. I have knocked a lot."

"Sorry."

"Put on clothes and come downstairs." He'd glanced at her outfit. "Bring a coat."

_Bring a coat and seven layers would have been more helpful._  She made a mental note to get some hot water bottles to carry in her outside pockets. And some for her inside pockets. And one for her hat.  


The rays of sun made it to her at a severe angle, and as she squinted up at the sky she guessed there were only a few hours of sunlight left. How on earth was she ever going to make solar energy work in a place like this? A light snow was falling, and Alina realized she'd need to figure out a way to keep the solar panels from getting covered in a blizzard. They'd be warm enough to melt a light snow, but a blizzard would overwhelm them quickly. How much light even gets through in a blizzard? She added those items to her mental list of things she'd have to learn.

They walked several blocks past rows of identical buildings until Ivan gestured to one. "This is where you will work. You will start Monday." Alina gazed at the building, trying to guess from the windows the type of labs that would be inside, but the most remarkable thing about the building was how nondescript it seemed. Monday was two days away and she thought she might be too curious to wait. Ivan had already started walking again and she had to run to catch up.

"Do you know who I'll be working with? What sort of space will I have?"

"I do not know," he grunted, pushing open a door. Alina followed him in, grateful for the warm burst of heat that met them. They were in a large cafeteria, filled with long tables. It was nearly empty. "This is where you will eat. Lunch is almost over." 

They walked towards the serving lines, and Ivan spoke in Ravkan with the man behind the counter. Alina glanced over the food. There was little fresh produce, but the serving dishes were teeming with fermented vegetables and what appeared to be several different preparations of herring. Ivan put two plates on his tray and heaped them with three scoops of everything. She took some fish and bread and skeptically put a few vegetables on her plate. 

Once they were seated, Ivan began methodically devouring his food. Alina almost admired the efficiency with which he ate – he certainly didn't waste energy savoring the meal. She pushed at a fermented cabbage leaf with her fork. "Where's Genya today?" 

"Working," he said in between mouthfuls. She deliberately ignored his look that suggested that if it weren't for her, he would be working, too.

"Were you also in the ambassador's division of the military?" He nodded, his head back down over his plates. "What division was that?"

"Integrated division: Infantry, intelligence. Development." 

"What did you do there?"

He looked up. "Lots of questions."

Alina covered her annoyance with a smile. "I'm just looking to get to know people and make friends."

Ivan grunted and resumed eating. "You learn Ravkan first."

Alina picked at her food. She assumed the fermented vegetables were an acquired taste. 

Ivan had consumed the remainder of his food in a surprisingly small amount of time, so soon enough they were back outside walking another few frigid blocks to the library. The library was older than the other buildings Alina had been seen — the construction clearly predated the civil war — but though there were rooms and rooms of shelves within the library, they were only sparsely populated with books. Ivan shrugged when Alina asked about it. "Rebels burn books. Casualties of war." 

He led her to a section that appeared, from the English titles she could make out, to be Ravkan history and geography. She picked up a book and flipped through it.

"Get books you need to learn more about Ravka. You find in English, I will get the rest."

She scanned the titles carefully, pulling out every third or fourth book.  _Maps of Ravka_  seemed like it would be useful, though the title page declared it to be twenty years out of date.  _Ravkan Geopolitics: A Guide_  was similarly aged, but as good a place to start as any; nothing on the shelf seemed to have been published more recently. She had a pile of five or six books when Ivan came over with a large armload.   


"I won't be able to read those."

Ivan indicated the top one with his head and Alina took it and opened to a page in the middle. There were tables of dates, times, and angles. "Weather tables," he said. "You will understand enough."

Alina raised an eyebrow. "Won't this be easier to deal with on a computer? I imagine these data have been digitized by now."

"You are not in America," Ivan grunted, turning towards the exit. "Your imagination is not so good here."

They trudged back to the dormitory where Alina was staying. Ivan had taken all the books and threw them over his back in a bag the library had given him, seemingly unphased by both the weight and the cold as Alina huddled behind him. He carried the books all the way to her room and unpacked them gently on the shelf next to the books Alina had brought with her from America. He adjusted the spines of all the books so they were flush with the edge of the shelf.

"Thank you," Alina said quietly, curious what caused a man who treated food as a chore and ignored weather completely to take the time to adjust the books on a shelf just so. 

Ivan nodded and closed the door behind him.

She'd slumped into her desk chair after he had left, pulling _Ravkan Geopolitics_  towards her, and she was still there when she heard another knock on the door. She straightened, feeling a crick in her neck, and saw that it was full dark outside her window. She was a third of the way through the book and feeling increasingly uneasy; reading about the forces leading up to the war that killed her parents was hardly fun, and there was a feeling burning in her stomach that she couldn't put a name to. The scar on her palm itched. She stood and opened the door.  


The ambassador stood in the hallway, suited, wearing the same long coat he had been when he stepped out of the limousine on another continent. Alina now wondered how he survived in just that coat. He glanced into the room behind her.

"Reading already."

She followed his gaze behind her to the book lying open on her desk and shrugged. "You sent me to the library." 

He nodded and motioned for her to follow him. "You're starting Ravkan lessons tonight."

She closed the door, grabbing her coat from the chair, and followed him down the staircase. To her surprise, instead of leading her outside, he continued down the stairs into the basement. From there he opened another door that led to a long tunnel. "It pays to be prepared," he said in response to her widening eyes, "in a city with winters and wars like ours." 

Alina took a moment to be grateful that she didn't have to navigate the weather outside now that it was dark. She also made a note to make Ivan pay for the apparently unnecessary outdoor excursions earlier that day. They walked the corridor in silence for a few moments, dim lamps lighting the way.

"Ivan pointed out where my lab will be. He said I'll start Monday?" The ambassador nodded. "Who will I be working with?'

"Some of the best in our military's research division."

"Military?"

He glanced at her, light from the lamps creating shadows on his cheeks. "I've secured funding for this project through the military. There's a longstanding research division that focuses on innovations to make our populace less vulnerable. There are similar situations in America; you might have had more levels of indirection, but if you'd stayed your funding would have come from the Department of Defense in the end." 

She shook her head in an effort to clear it. "Am I joining the Ravkan military?"

"In a strict sense, yes."

"I don't fight."

"Nor will you be expected to."

"I'm not a soldier."

He looked down at her, his gaze unreadable. "Everyone in Ravka is a soldier."

"Even you, Ambassador?"

She thought she saw his mouth twitch in the shadows. "Especially me, Alina."

* * *

Her first Ravkan lesson was uncomfortable. Not just because Alina didn't speak Ravkan or because her teacher didn't speak English. It also wasn't simply because the woman had plopped a stack of papers in front of Alina that Alina couldn't read. The teacher would read aloud a few words, then pause and look at Alina expectantly. When Alina inevitably stumbled repeating the nonsense syllables back to her, the woman would sigh before moving on to the next line. Alina told herself it was sitting so close to a roaring fireplace that was making sweat begin to trickle down her back, but after a while she had to admit that the fire might not be to blame.

The lesson went poorly. Alina was not used to lessons going poorly.

When there was a knock at the door, she jumped to get it and gave a surprised Genya a huge hug. "Get me out of here," Alina whispered.

Genya laughed and hugged her back. "You're having that much fun, huh?" The teacher yelled at them in Ravkan from the chair next to the fire, and Genya called back a reply, stepping inside and closing the door. "Grab your things and let's go."

Alina walked back to gather the papers from where she'd been sitting, conscious of her teacher's stare as she bent to retrieve them, and then turned to face her. The woman was older, though not old enough that Alina was unsurprised at the cane she had leaned on during their lesson. She clutched the top with both hands now, resting her chin on them as she examined Alina. There was something about the stare that made Alina uncomfortable, but the woman either didn't realize or didn't care. Alina bowed awkwardly, unable to communicate verbally, and headed out with Genya.

Down in the tunnel, Genya held out a paper bag. "Trade you," she said, taking the papers Alina was clutching to her chest. There was a sandwich in the bag, and Alina hadn't realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite.

"So do you speak Ravkan yet?" Alina moaned through the food in her mouth and rolled her eyes. "Let's see what she has you reading." Genya held the papers close to her face in the dim light of the tunnel. Her eyebrows knit together and she flipped to the second page. A few pages later she cast a sideways glance at Alina. 

Alina swallowed her food. "What are they?"

"They're … eclectic. This first one is the speech that the president gave when he was inaugurated. The second is a poem that children tend to recite around the winter solstice. The next is a prayer — old Ravkan — where each line begins with a letter of the alphabet. It's not exactly the material I would have picked out for a first class. Did you go over how to actually read this?" 

Alina shook her head. "Is she … has she taught other people Ravkan before?" 

"Who knows," Genya sighed. "I'll bring you a book on the alphabet in the morning. I've been informed that you'll have lessons every evening." 

Alina wasn't sure she could handle that. 

They walked up the stairs that led to the building where Alina was staying. "What about you? Are you heading back to America soon?" She hoped that Genya would stay but couldn't imagine that the ambassador would leave his chief of staff behind when he returned to America.

"Not sure. The ambassador has some business he's dealing with here." Once they reached the lobby, she squeezed Alina's shoulder. "I'll come get you in the morning. Everything will be fine. "  


* * *

Alina didn't sleep well that night. She tossed and turned, finding that the combination of jet lag and the thought of joining the military made sleep impossible. She had always considered herself a pacifist; it was both the default for a college student on the east coast and a natural fit for a war orphan. She had never been forced to examine what it might mean for the military to be involved in defensive measures for the country's citizens; Alina was increasingly realizing how lucky she was that she'd grown up in a country that wasn't constantly at war within its own borders. 

She'd never thought of herself as lucky before.

Eventually she gave up on sleep. She pulled her laptop out of her bag and searched for a wireless network; the names read like gibberish to her but she picked one that didn't require a password and it seemed to work. She raised an eyebrow at the lax security as she pulled up her email. Her inbox had several messages from people who wanted to interview her or get her to work with them after seeing the recent piece in the Washington Post. There were the typical campus-wide emails about events, discussions from her lab about an upcoming presentation. Nothing from Mal. She couldn't tell if she was disappointed or relieved.

After a few minutes of scrolling through emails, a message popped up in the corner of her screen.

 Nikolai: _Alina! What's going on? Did you make it to Ravka?  Do you miss me horribly?_

She let out a burst of laughter. She clicked the videochat icon on the message window and waited for Nikolai to accept, turning on the desk lamp so he'd be able to see her. After a few moments, they were connected. She thought she could make out the wall of his living room, but the video was so dark she had trouble seeing him.

"Alina!" He sounded overjoyed to see her. "Tell me you're okay."

"I'm okay! It's cold here, though. Really, really cold."

"You do realize you went to Ravka," he replied dryly, "not the Caribbean?"

"Yes, thank you. You should see it here. There are mountains and snow and … " She waved her arms, trying to encompass the experience of returning in the middle of winter to a country she'd been airlifted out of as an infant, and failing. She searched for words, eventually settling on: "Solar power is going to be really hard."

"They're lucky they have you." There was warmth in his voice where there could have been resentment, and for the first time she felt a lump in her throat at the thought of what she'd left behind. She brushed her eyes.

"Hey, turn on a light, I can't see you at all."

"Not much to see, really," he demurred.

"That's surprising to hear from someone who feels the need to constantly remind everyone how attractive he is."

He paused, then sighed, and she saw the shadow of his arm reach for a lamp and pull the cord. When he turned back towards the camera she gasped.

"Nikolai, what the hell happened to you?"

He had a black eye — a bad one — and a cut beneath it to match what seemed to be scratches on the other side of his face. He winced, and she imagined that perhaps he'd also been avoiding having to see his own face on the videochat next to hers. "Would you believe an honorable fight in the best interest of our national security?"

"No. What happened?"

"So, you skipped town last week, leaving the lab and me in a bit of a lurch."

" _Nikolai, what happened_."  


"I'm getting there. The lab and I will recover. We'll be fine." He took a sip from the teacup sitting next to him before replying. "I hear you left without talking to Mal."

_Oh no_. "Nikolai —"  


"Despite what I can only imagine was crisp and polished prose letting him know that his childhood-best-friend-turned-girlfriend had fled the continent and he should soldier on, he seemed to think that rather than devoting yourself to the Ravkan nationalist cause you'd perhaps thrown yourself instead into the arms of a certain undeniably attractive lab partner." Nikolai rubbed his good eye. "He showed up a couple days ago wanting to talk."

Alina was starting to get a pretty good idea of how that talk went. Her stomach twisted. "Are you — is he —"

"I'll be fine, thank you." He rumpled his hair and squinted at the video of himself. "The bruise and the scratches from the gravel aren't particularly fetching, but they should heal quickly. This though," he said, tenderly feeling the cut below his eye, "well, I hear that chicks dig scars. That's a thing, right?"

She couldn't quite bring herself to smile. "What about Mal?"

"I'm not pressing charges. I know you've asked me to stay out of your relationship with him, and for the last four years I have. But I'm a little involuntarily involved at this point. He was hurting, Alina. He seems lost without you." 

Ravkan internet proved to be too reliable to cut out in the middle of Nikolai's speech, and though it pained Alina to hear him say it, she knew he was right. She had known that Mal would hurt when she left. She hoped that he would heal.

After a moment of silence in which Alina avoided looking at her screen, Nikolai regained a bit of his bounce. "But, there's not much I can do about it now. I don't think he'll come by wanting to talk again. It must not be very rewarding to fight someone with a security detail."

Alina rolled her eyes at that. Nikolai talked about his security detail as if he was the son of the president rather than the second child of the chair of the senate's Foreign Relations Committee. He had a driver and bodyguard — occasionally — and he always bemoaned never really being able to put them to good use. At least it sounded like he had finally gotten a chance.

He glanced at his watch. "I have to head out now – I'm meeting someone from the lab to go over a project for next week. Actually, it's Elanor, do you remember her?"

"I do remember her, Nikolai. I've only been gone three days."

"Ah, right. It feels like longer." He looked at her, eyes moving over her features on the screen, and his face softened a little. "It was really good talking with you, Alina. Be careful out there."

"You're telling _me_ to be careful? You're the one who's managed to get punched in the face."

He smiled. "Touché. Be more careful than I would be, then."


	5. Chapter 5

Alina had finally fallen asleep in the open pages of her textbook as the sun rose, and it couldn't have been much later that Genya came bursting through the door. Alina picked her head up from the desk  and rubbed her eyes, trying to focus.

"Good morning!" Genya nearly sang as Alina's eyes drooped shut again. It was entirely too early for anyone to be so chipper, especially someone as jetlagged as Alina was. There was a thud from behind her and she forced her eyes back open. She turned around to see Genya holding out a paper cup of coffee. "Thought you might need this." 

Alina took it gratefully and Genya busied herself opening up a box she'd brought. After a few sips, Alina felt slightly more like a real person. "What's in the box?" she asked.

"First, as promised, this," Genya said, handing her a small book that the cover declared was a copy of  _Ravkan From Scratch: A Beginner's Study._ Alina groaned inwardly remembering her lesson the night before. "Somewhat more exciting, though, I picked up your uniforms. You won’t need them until tomorrow which gives us some time today to fix them up." Genya pulled an armful of dark blue clothing out of the box and laid it on the bed. "Here, put them on."  


Alina stood up uncertainly. "What are we fixing?" "The everyday uniforms are _unisex_." Genya rolled her eyes as she said the word and held out a top. "This, of course, means that they are made to fit men, which means, in turn, that they look terrible on women. We’re going to adjust them so that you don’t look like you’re wearing a blanket."  


"You know how to do that?" Alina asked as she did the buttons. She caught a glimpse of herself in the vanity. The cut of the shirt was aggressively unflattering.

"During the time I’ve been in the army I’ve probably adjusted thousands of these," Genya responded, already grabbing and pinning the fabric around Alina’s side. "I’ve submitted four formal applications for new designs for women – I've gotten the dress uniforms changed but it has strangely not seemed to be a priority for daily wear." She put in a few more pins before tugging the bottom of the shirt, eyeing Alina critically, and then stepping back so she could see herself in the mirror. "Better already."

It was better. A lot better, in fact. Genya had fitted the shirt brilliantly, showing her curves without showing them off. "You’re a magician."

"And I know it. Now the pants and then we’ll do a few more of the shirts."

Twenty minutes later they’d gone through five standard uniform sets and Alina was putting on the dress uniform. It was the same dark blue as the others but the buttons on the top were set off slightly to the side. The panels of the jacket came down farther, about to the middle of Alina's thigh, and it tied around the waist with a sash. The hem of the skirt rested a few inches above Alina’s knee. Genya still pinned the arms and fussed with the fabric, but she had fewer complaints about it than the other outfits.

"When will I ever wear this?" Alina couldn’t imagine she’d be called upon to attend many more state dinners once things got into swing, and she didn’t even want to  _think_  about being asked to step outside in winter in a skirt.   


"There will be opportunities, no doubt. The president does love parties." Alina wasn’t sure why those parties would involve her. Genya packed up the pinned uniforms as Alina stepped out of the last one. "I'll get started on these today so you have something to wear this week. I'll be back to take you to your Ravkan lesson. And, before I forget," she dug into her pocket, "for you."

A phone. Alina almost laughed. Her American phone had been sitting in her backpack since the flight, forgotten; this one was much nicer.

Genya gave Alina a quick kiss on the cheek and headed out the door, managing to not slam it behind her despite having both her arms occupied with carrying the box of uniforms. Alina turned on the phone. It chimed and brought her to a list of contacts and she saw that Genya had taken the liberty of adding herself. She clicked on the entry labeled _Genya Safin_  and was rewarded with a photo of Genya sticking out her tongue.   


Alina thought for a moment, then dug her old phone out of her backpack. She powered it on. She didn't have service in Ravka and she felt twinge guilt at her relief – she'd never know if Mal had tried to call or text. She pulled up her short list of contacts and went through them. She wouldn't need the phone number for security at her lab or her advisor anymore. She hesitated as she scrolled past Mal's name, but in the end she only copied Nikolai's number into her new phone.

She snapped a photo of the view outside her window and texted it to him with the caption: "It's already tomorrow in Ravka." 

A few seconds later her phone buzzed.  _new phone who dis._

"I'm pretty sure that's my line ... how many people in Ravka do you even know?"

The phone buzzed again.  _I hope you're not suggesting I'm not well connected._

"Not even for a moment."

After a minute, a photo popped up on her screen with the caption  _It's saturday night here._ It was a photo of the view from Nikolai's window, and it was, as always, breathtaking. He lived on the top floor of his building (" _Penthouse_ ," he had corrected her more than once), and from his apartment at night the city spread out like a blanket of stars. A light dusting of snow covered the rooftops and a few flakes were caught in the flash. The highway was a blur of white and red lights stretching into the distance. She thought she would be homesick, but found that she wasn't.

* * *

As an eighteen-year-old, Alina had felt like she was exploring a foreign planet her first week at university. The hedges in front of the dorms were impeccably trimmed and the buildings were formed and decorated in imitation of the heavy style of old England. The students in her classes used words like "wicked" and talked about hacking. They dropped casual references to philosophers they'd read, to countries they'd visited, to robots they'd built.  She was overwhelmed by the size of her classes, by the sheer weight and expense of every textbook.

She'd explored campus cautiously, unsure where she fit in among the Lantsovs and the Kennedys and even, in her first class of the semester, a Rockefeller and a Saudi prince. She felt like an intruder, cautiously making her way between the buildings so many of her classmates assumed to be theirs by right. It wasn't until her lab course at the end of the first week where, among a discussion of that week's reading on solar energy, she realized this was it, this was her corner of campus. It was surrounded by foreignness, but it was a place where she could lose herself in work and be happy.

She reminded herself of that experience as she wandered the hallways of her new residence. Someday these halls, too, with their industrial whitewashing and crisp, military corners, would be familiar. She would walk them unseeing, just as she had come to take the imposing archways of her campus for granted. Today, though, she explored a new world of bare concrete corridors and tightly closed doors, the occasional overheard snippet of Ravkan. 

Her own room was on the fifth floor out of eight. Wandering up to the top floor she poked her head into a laundry room, where a number of bored-looking soldiers flipped through magazines. The next door opened into an expansive and busy gym — given the weather, she supposed it made sense that the military would do a lot of their training indoors. There was a medium-sized room that appeared to serve as a library; it was largely empty of people but at least full of books, though closer inspection revealed that none of them were in English. At the end of the corridor the hallway opened into a large room with couches in industrial fabric and a small kitchenette with coffee. Two people played a lackadaisical game of ping pong.

It didn't take her too long to explore the entire building. She had no intention of going back outside, which meant that any further exploring would have to be done via the underground tunnel system. The writing in the tunnels had all been in Ravkan, so heading in without a translated map seemed like a mistake. She'd have to do the rest of her exploring virtually.

She returned to her room and pulled  _Maps of Ravka_  down from the shelf where Ivan had arranged it. It was a large folio, and she carefully positioned it on the desk to ensure the weight of the pages would be supported. She flipped through page by page, examining each map, amazed at how many types of information could be communicated in that form — there were maps that showed the elevation of each area, ones that focused on wind currents, average date of first snowfall, depth of snowbanks.

She spent a while studying the mountain ranges, sounding out the names, the transliterated words stumbling awkwardly off her tongue. Halfway through the book she found a map that showed the population in each village and city. There were a few with sizable populations that seemed like potentially good candidates for solar power — they were in valleys, isolated, and she flipped back to the elevation map to confirm that the mountain ranges around them weren't too high. She worked over the map carefully, examining each village, until one valley made her breath catch in her throat.

_Dva Stolba_. That's where she was from, rescued from the massacre. She rubbed a thumb over the scar on her palm and wondered if the church was still there. If she should visit.

There were quite a few villages in the valley, and the population counts listed were generally in the low four digits for each. She ran her finger over the ink, thinking. This book was twenty years old, which meant it was published a couple years after she was born — if these were the population counts at the time, did that mean people had survived the massacre? Did she have cousins or uncles who might live there now? She hauled out her laptop, searched for Ravkan population maps, and quickly found one from just a few years ago.

She zoomed in to see the smallest villages and scrolled towards the valley of Dva Stolba, heart beating hard in her mouth. She looked down at the page, then back up at the screen. She blinked.

It was the same valley, it seemed — it was labeled  _Dva Stolba_ both places and appeared to be ringed by the same mountain ranges — but the newer map showed none of the villages that were on the older one. The map online pictured two villages, each with populations of around 5,000, but their locations and names didn't correspond to any of the villages on the map in front of her. She searched the print map, looking for an answer, and a note at the bottom of the page caught her eye: "All population counts from the latest census prior to publication." A flip to the citations it back of the book revealed that census to have been several years before Alina's birth.

_Of course._ That's what she'd grown up hearing – that the rebels didn't leave survivors, that she'd been the only one to survive in the whole valley. She was foolish for letting herself even consider that she might still have family. She knew this, intellectually, had known it all along, but her body was shaking from the combination of adrenaline and jet lag.

She closed her laptop gently before crossing the room and crawling into bed. The fire in her stomach from the day before had returned. She didn't recognize the feeling, though it began to scrape and claw at her insides. She curled around herself, arms tucked against her chest, and fell asleep.

The sun was nearing the horizon by the time she woke up. She forced herself to put on running shoes and go to the gym; her jet lag was clearly not getting any better, and though she'd had no reason to use the knowledge she vaguely remembered hearing that, failing sunshine, exercise was the best way to get on a regular schedule. As she walked back to her room eight kilometers later, her stomach let out a groan of protest. She needed to get some food.

She was toweling off her hair post-shower when Genya knocked on the door. "I finished a couple of your uniforms," she indicated a bag on the floor next to her. "I didn't see you at lunch and no one recalled a brown-haired American wandering around, so I brought you some —"

Alina grabbed the foil wrapped package out of Genya's hands as her stomach gave another loud growl. Genya laughed and brought the uniforms in as Alina sunk her teeth gratefully into the sandwich. The flavors between the rye bread weren't all familiar to her; there were definitely pickled vegetables, though  _what_  vegetables she had no idea, and she was pretty sure she recognized herring. No matter — after a few bites she groaned in relief.  


"Feeling better?" Alina nodded. Genya hung the uniforms in the small closet and sat down on the chair by the desk. She glanced at the open folio, then gingerly lifted up one side to see the cover. "Outdated maps of Ravka! At least our mountains haven't changed much." She looked at the page it was open to. "Population has shifted somewhat more significantly."

Alina, nearly done with the sandwich, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Brutally."

Genya scanned the page for a few more moments before looking up. "Do you know where you're from?"

"Somewhere in the valley of _Dva Stolba_."

"Ah." The look on Genya's face said enough; Alina changed the subject.

"This is a barracks?"

Genya nodded. " _Kazarma Semnadt_ , if you get lost. The housing here is pretty integrated, so there are lots of divisions that have people here."

Alina swallowed the last of the sandwich. "How much of Os Alta is military?"

Genya blew a lock of hair out of her face. "Most of it. Most of developed Ravka is military at this point. It's a terrible situation for a state to be in but it hasn't felt like we've had any other choice. Speaking of not having choices," she looked at her watch, "we should get you to your Ravkan lesson, huh?"

Alina suffered through her second lesson no better than the first, and that night she slept fitfully. Running had clearly not gotten rid of her jet lag completely and thinking about her lab the next morning both thrilled and intimidated her. She set her alarm to wake her much earlier than necessary; Genya had said she'd come by before eight, but when Alina's phone buzzed there was no hint of the sun in the sky.

She showered quickly and pulled on one of the uniforms Genya had returned the night before and turned to examine herself in the mirror – Genya had done an amazing job and the outfit looked like it had been made just for Alina. She recognized it as the dark blue version of the standard soldier's uniform she'd seen in newspaper photos. There were two small patches on the front of her uniform above her left breast, one with three gold stripes and another that had writing on it. She had a good guess as to what it said but pulled out the book Genya had gotten for her and sounded it out anyway. _Starkov_.

Her reflection in the mirror looked serious. Was this the future she would have had if she'd stayed in Ravka? She would have been drafted; would it have been into this division? Would the face that stared out at her now be the same? She rubbed the scar on her palm and bent her stiff fingers.

Genya led her through the underground corridor maze and to the cafeteria she'd visited with Ivan two days before. She'd advised Alina that she wouldn't need a coat, and though remembering her frigid walk with Ivan had made her loathe to leave her new coat behind as soon as they entered the cafeteria she was immediately glad she had. The room was crowded with soldiers and the heat and humidity of the warm bodies assaulted her. The people formed a sea of colors — there were some people, like her, in dark blue. Others had uniforms of purple, white, or olive, and there were a large number in khaki with red belts, cuffs, and collars. Everyone wore a badge on their arm; Alina looked down at her own uniform and found she had none.

She followed Genya — seemingly the only person not in uniform – through the breakfast line. She helped herself to a bowl of porridge and a large coffee before looking for produce and settling for a small cup of canned diced pear. They sat together at the end of a long table.

"What do the different color uniforms mean?"

Genya blew lightly on her tea. "The khaki and red are infantry, special forces, and medical personnel; you can tell them apart by whether they have red collars, belts, or cuffs. Purple are intelligence. Support staff in white. Blue, obviously, are research and development."

Alina looked around. Perhaps an eighth of the crowd was in blue. "There are a lot of people in blue."

"Don't get your hopes up." Genya took a sip of tea. "Protective measures for the populace is a small part of R&D most of these people are in the weapons division."

"Ah." Alina had finished her porridge and was forcing herself to eat the tasteless, grainy pears. "And the olive uniforms?"

"Those are members of the president’s personal unit – the division has a long and pompous name but we generally call them  _divizioniki_. They fall outside of the rest of the military; they were members of the president’s division when he was in the military and he’s still their direct commander."

"And what do they do?"

"Drink, mostly." Genya frowned slightly, but when she looked back up from her coffee at Alina, her eyes sparkled with their usual suppressed laughter. "We should get going if you're to show up to your first day on time,  _Sardzhent._ " 

_Sargeant_. Alina figured she was really in the military, now.

* * *

The tunnels were crowded, full of uniforms heading to their jobs, and Alina was grateful for Genya's bright red hair that made her easy to spot in a crowd. The colors of the uniforms pooled and separated, and after several turns and a few flights of stairs, Genya was the only one not wearing blue.

They stopped in front of a door and Genya rested her hand on the doorknob before turning to Alina. "It will be fine. Just, don't let Nazyalensky get to you." Before Alina could ask what she meant, Genya had pushed open the door. 

The lab was enormous; it looked to Alina like an airplane hangar. There were clusters of tables and machines and workstations with groups of people gathered around. There were chalkboards – actual chalkboards! – on the walls with writing on them. Alina drifted over to one and touched it carefully, rubbing the chalk dust between her fingertips. Her university had been far too high tech to use chalkboards by the time she went there; the incongruity of diagrams for advanced weaponry on such old-school technology made her smile. Genya tugged at her sleeve. "Come on, let's go find the power people." 

They wandered through the lab, Alina peeking over the shoulders of every group she passed. Some of them were working on things that were obviously weapons – she could see through what she hoped was bulletproof glass to a firing range, and though people were shooting the expected sounds of gunshots didn't come. A large trough contained small shards of metal and glass in a variety of menacing shapes, but it wasn't until she passed the table beside it that she realized they were shrapnel being tested for what would cause maximal damage. She shuddered.

Genya stopped in front of a group of four people huddled around a table. The woman talking turned around to face the two of them. Dark curls fell over her shoulders and a her lips were a twisted deep red. She arched one manicured eyebrow. "Maybe you missed the sign that said 'authorized personnel only,' Safin." 

"A pleasure to see you, as always, Zoya."

The woman snorted. " _Leytenant_  Nazyalensky, if you've forgotten."

"How could I forget when you continually go to such lengths to remind everyone?" Past the lieutenant Alina saw two of the women sitting openmouthed. This was apparently not how people typically spoke to their commander.

Zoya tossed her curls behind one shoulder. "Is there a particular reason you're here?"

Genya took Alina's elbow and pulled her closer. "I've come to deliver  _Sardzhent_ Starkov, your new report, into your more than capable hands. I believe you're expecting her."

"Ah, yes. The one who will bring solar power to Ravka." The lieutenant's English was heavier than Genya's – the rs harder and the vowels slightly drawn out in a way that made the look she gave Alina seem more intimidating. Zoya's gaze swept over the sargeant's body and clearly found her wanting. "That is the stupidest idea I've ever heard." The two women whose mouths had been open glanced at each other and broke into nervous giggles.

Genya's smile was tight. "I will do you the favor of not repeating that."

"Of course you will." Zoya's gaze now rested firmly on Alina, who made an effort to meet it. "So, Starkov, on Friday I was ordered to redirect resources to be available for you, moving them away from other, more promising, projects. Apparently solar power is the future, despite the fact that we are clearly too far north for that. Why focus on wind or water power when we can chase some development project pipe dream instead?" 

Alina knew Zoya had asked the question rhetorically, but she couldn't help herself. "There have been a lot of developments in solar energy recently, and reasons to think that it might effective in rural areas even this far north. What we've seen so far with Solnyshko – "

" _Solnyshko?_ " the lieutenant repeated incredulously. "Even a little sun is a big name for a project that hasn't done anything yet."

"It will," Genya interjected. "Assuming, of course, that your division is prepared to help."

Zoya's lips turned down. "I'm a soldier, Safin, and I received an order." She indicated a red-haired man sitting next to the two women who'd giggled. "Harshaw’s group will be working with Starkov to help her get up to speed." 

He raised his hand and waved. "Welcome to _Energiya Proteksiya_!"

"Protective Energy," Genya translated.

Zoya sighed. "Of course you don't speak Ravkan."

"I'm learning," Alina said defensively, though she was pretty sure with the amount she'd actually learned her Ravkan lessons counted as doing nothing of the sort.

One of the women who'd giggled earlier pointed to Alina's arm. "You're missing our insignia." Alina noticed everyone else wore a badge on their arm with an icon that looked like wind blades surrounding waves. Not the most clever or visually captivating design, but she figured it was at least descriptive.

"I didn't put it on," Genya interjected. "I heard the division may be switching reporting structure and I didn't want to have to rip them out right after I'd gone to all the trouble."

Zoya raised her brows. "Where did you hear that, Genya? Did the president let it slip?"

Genya's lips twitched but her tone was smooth. "If you spent less time enjoying the sound of your own voice,  _Leytenant_ , you too might actually hear something once in a while."

Zoya clapped her hands together in mock delight. "This has been lovely but Starkov needs to get to work. If there's nothing further?" 

Genya bowed deeply. "She's all yours." She winked at Alina before she turned and headed out of the lab, seemingly oblivious to the heads turning after her.

Zoya exhaled. "Starkov, I've put together the history of our unit and our objectives for the year. You'll want to read those. You also have administrative paperwork to deal with." Alina eyed the formidable stack of papers on the table and gave an inward sigh. A lot of dead trees stood between her and actually getting any work done. Zoya frowned. "You can spend the next couple days learning what Harshaw's team has been doing and filling out requests for the resources you'll need to get started making a copy of the photovoltaic cell we've heard such wonderful things about. Nadia and I will keep working on the wind turbines we created without help from Harshaw's group, and Marie will be working by herself now. I want a functioning cell and a plan for getting the first valley up and running on solar power by next Friday." With that, the lieutenant turned and headed out, Nadia and Marie trailing behind her.

Alina let her breath out slowly and turned towards Harshaw. "Ravka is always this much fun," he assured her.

* * *

Alina had spent the entire day sitting with Harshaw's group, watching them work as she filled out requisition forms for supplies. Like the incongruity of the chalkboard she'd seen earlier, it felt almost comical to be requesting a nearly-obscene amount of semiconductor-grade polysilicon by filling out a paper form – by hand, in triplicate. Harshaw's group had worked through lunch, an occurrence apparently typical enough that someone from a neighboring lab station had dropped off sandwiches for them. Harshaw had handed one to Alina, and she'd raised an eyebrow.

"You're eating in the lab?"

He'd shrugged. "We pretty much live here. And it's fine – all the poisons are made in the lab across the hall."

Alina had begun to laugh before she realized no one else was. She had unwrapped the sandwich quietly, feeling like a rebel as she bit into it not a few yards away from a workstation. 

Now she sat in her room, staring at the pile of papers she'd brought back from the lab. She'd finished filling out forms requesting the basics of what she'd need, but it hadn't left her time to start reading about the division before her Ravkan lesson. The sun has long since set and she was exhausted but knew she needed to have read the papers the lieutenant had left for her before she came in tomorrow. She wandered up to the top floor of her building and made her way to the coffee machine in the common room. The drawers in the kitchenette appeared to be helpfully labeled with their contents – unfortunately, the labels were in Ravkan, and she had opened nearly every drawer before she found paper cups.

She filled a cup with coffee and leaned back on the counter as she watched two soldiers – khaki uniforms, red belts – play ping pong. Most of the room was occupied by several groups of soldiers having loud, animated discussions in Ravkan. This was what she'd imagined life to be like in college for students who were able to live in the dorms: late night discussions, competitions, spontaneous social events in between studying for exams.

She shook her head, cutting off that train of thought; she knew exactly where it would end and she didn't have time to worry about Mal right now. She pushed herself off the counter, went back to her room, and pulled the stack of papers Zoya had printed onto her lap, ready to start a long night of reading. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for reading – I hope you enjoyed it! Harshaw is helping Alina find her place in the military so expect to see more of him. And, of course, we'll be seeing more of the ambassador shortly ... ~*~


	6. Chapter 6

Alina's first conscious movement the next morning was her hand groping across her bed to silence the buzzing phone. She opened one eye and saw a text from Genya on her screen. 

"Be there in 10 don't leave without me!"

Alina groaned inwardly. She was tempted to roll back over and go to sleep, but she forced herself out of bed. By the time she heard a knock, Alina thought she might pass for someone who'd gotten more than just a few hours of sleep. She opened the door to see Genya standing in a white uniform, grinning at her. 

"Check it out!" Genya spun around in a circle.

Alina blinked slowly, not yet awake enough to figure out what was going on.  _White uniform._ She tried to remember what Genya had told her about uniform colors the day before as she followed Genya down the hall. "You're joining the kitchen staff?"  


Genya rolled her eyes. "No, silly. My application for making uniforms that actually fit women was finally approved! I'm head of the Wardrobe Design Division now." She scrunched her nose a bit. "It's only me, but the good news is that means that the entire staff is excellent."

"What about the ambassador? Is he finding a new Chief of Staff?"

Genya blinked at Alina for a moment. "Oh, you haven't been watching the news! The ambassador has resigned."

"Resigned? Why?" Alina was suddenly alert. If the person who brought her over to Ravka was suddenly out of power, that didn't seem like it boded well for her. 

"The president is appointing him to run the military."

"The whole thing?"

Genya nodded. "He's a hero in a lot of circles here. It was a big deal when he resigned as General to become an ambassador – a lot of people thought he was retiring."

Alina laughed. "Retiring? He's like twenty-five!"

Genya shrugged. "He's closer to thirty, but either way it would have been well-deserved. The attacks from Shu Han and Fjerda are getting worse – him coming back to lead the Ravkan military is the first hope people have had in a while." When they entered the cafeteria, it was filled with the same animated discussion that Alina recognized from the common area last night. Now she realized what everyone must have been talking about. 

"Why aren't you staying on as his Chief of Staff here?"

"The military has a lot more support for that role already. I'm going to be doing it part time, but mostly,  _finally_ , getting the ladies of Ravka the uniforms they deserve." Genya shook out her hair as they walked into the breakfast line. "If we must make war, we can at least look good doing it."  


* * *

When Alina got to the lab, everyone was crowded into groups, talking. She passed by several clusters until she found  _Energiya Proteksiya_  huddled around a table. She squeezed in.  


"You haven't heard anything?" Nadia looked at Zoya expectantly.

Zoya shook her curls. "All I heard was no changes until next week. So while it sounds like there will be changes, I don't have any more information on what they are."

Marie frowned. "I heard a rumor that  _Energiya Proteksiya_  was being dismantled."  


"I heard we might get more people," Harshaw countered. They both looked to Zoya, who sighed.

"I hear the same rumors as you," she said. "Nothing else. In the meantime, there's work to be done. Don't get too distracted." When no one moved, she raised her eyebrows and looked at each of them in turn. "I mean it. Get to work."

Alina walked to the workstation that she'd been assigned and looked to see if any of the materials had arrived. It was empty. 

"It generally takes a couple days for requisitions to show up," Harshaw said over her shoulder. "Since you have some time, do you want to see the cool stuff we battery folks have going?" 

He led her over to a corner of the lab. There were several people working in that area, with tubes connected buckets of various sizes. It seemed like they were in the middle of setting up a new battery.

"This is where the real magic happens." Harshaw spread his hands out. "It’s one thing to be able to use energy that’s being thrown at you by the sun – it’s a whole separate thing to be able to store it for use whenever."

Alina quirked her eyebrow but took the bait. "So tell me about what you have going on here."

"As you know, storing energy is agnostic to the source — it means that the batteries we’ve been developing for the wind and river turbines should work just as well for your solar cells. Which is great." He walked her over to a chalkboard that had Ravka divided into thirteen numbered sections. "Each of these regions will be powered separately. We know about how much energy each valley would use, so based on the how strong the wind is and how often it dies down we can calculate the number of kilowatt hours we need to store for each region." He glanced at her. "Department goal is fewer than five disruptions to power supply a year. It’s a bold one considering that right now most of these places get power maybe a few days a month."

Alina nodded. "Not that enormous batteries aren’t fun, but rather than storing the energy centrally, why not just have solar panels on the rooftops? It’s not really feasible to decentralize wind or river energy, but it’s worked for solar in parts of Africa — they never built electrical grids because they don’t need them since each rooftop can supply its own energy."

"A couple reasons. First, the power grids are already in place in these regions because we do have power plants — we just can’t reliably get fuel for them anymore since Fjerda and Shu Han have cut off most of our trade routes. Second, though, and maybe most important, is that the places where solar panels on individual buildings have worked all have something that these villages don’t."

Alina groaned and smacked a hand to her forehead. "Sun."

"Bingo. Keep in mind that not only are you dealing with crazy latitude, these people  _live in valleys_. The mountains are huge. The amount of direct sunlight hitting a house each day even in the summer is not good news for you, Starkov."  


Alina shook her head. "Right. Okay. So we need to use a centralized system for each valley, probably with the photovoltaic cells in the mountains. The lab next to mine worked on water-based batteries. Is that what you’re doing?"

He shook his head. "We use quinones in our batteries."

Alina frowned. She’d heard of people working on storing energy using quinones, and had even gone to a talk on it — the idea is that you can mimic how plants store energy, and it would hopefully be easy to create a lot of these molecules cheaply. But it was still mostly just a clever idea; the technology was way behind batteries that split water molecules, store the hydrogen, and burn it for fuel when needed. "That technology's significantly less advanced – you're going to have to develop a lot of it yourself. Why not use hydrogen batteries instead?"

One of the people snorted from a table next to them. "We're trying to make the population safer, not incinerate them."

Harshaw narrowed his eyes at his report before giving Alina an apologetic shrug. "Organic molecules are a lot safer."

"There are some basic precautionary steps you can take to reduce the risk of hydrogen catching fire unintentionally, though."

"If you store the amount of hydrogen we’re talking about, Fjerda only needs to drop one well-placed bomb and – " he made his hands into fists and flicked his fingers open, "ka-boom."

The danger of sabotage hadn't even occurred to Alina. She had a lot to learn.

* * *

Once Alina understood what Harshaw's team would need to make batteries for her, her next step was letting them know how many kilowatt hours the batteries would need to store. The number would depend on the weather, wind, and debris in each region; she hoped the number of hours wouldn't be much larger than for wind power, but she didn't have a good feeling about it. The maps of the country that  _Energiya Proteksiya_  had were large and quite detailed – Alina spent hours zooming around elevation maps on one of the monitors in the lab letting herself get comfortable with each of the regions before pulling up the code they'd used to calculate likely wind patterns in an area. It would be relatively easy to modify and feed in the information on sunlight hitting each area to get a comparable estimate for what they'd need for solar; her Python was significantly better than her Ravkan.  


Then she found the data that Ravka had on sunlight by region and by day and her stomach sunk. There were only three stations in Ravka that had been recording any information in the last twenty years and they were all in valleys. She groaned.

"Don't tell me you're just  _now_  realizing that Ravka isn't set up for solar power." Alina looked up to see Zoya looking at her, arms akimbo, eyebrows raised in mock disbelief.  


Alina sighed. "Not at all. It just looks like I'll have to spend time setting up stations to collect the data, which means less time for everything else."

Zoya nodded and sat down. "It took us about six months to get those stations set up to collect the data on wind, and you don't have that much time. Pick a few places and hope they're representative enough." Alina opened her mouth to object, but Zoya continued. "Look, I don't think this project is going to work, but you're working in my division which means I need you to produce results. Soon."

Alina swallowed her retort. "I'll have a working prototype within a couple weeks of the materials arriving."

"A prototype of what you already made in university is a good start. It's going to need to be a lot better to get anything done here." Zoya pulled out a tube of bright red lipstick and reapplied it perfectly before standing. "Fun chatting. Let's do this again soon."

* * *

Two nights later, Alina was sitting at her desk trying to unblur the numbers on the page in front of her. She'd grudgingly acknowledged that Zoya's suggestion to monitor just a few places was the right move, so she had picked three mountains that had significantly different wind and precipitation patterns to serve as samples. It would have to do. Now she needed to calculate the optimal place for a solar panel on each of those mountain tops – there were hundreds of options she could choose from. She'd write a program to go through all of them, but she needed to understand what would happen to the angle of the sun over the course of the year first, and getting it all down on paper was proving to be painful. 

Not as painful, though, as going to bed.

Her jet lag was much improved, which meant that when she crawled into her twin bed at night she was able to feel just how different her life here was from her life in America. She didn't miss Mal – not quite – but she still found herself reaching for his warmth and presence as she drifted off to sleep. It had been close to four years since she'd spent a whole night alone, and every time her hands brushed the wall instead of his body the memory and guilt became a nearly physical pain in her chest. She wasn't deliberately avoiding getting into bed, exactly – she was just trying to make sure she was too exhausted to think when she did.

There was a quiet knock at the door and she stood to answer it.

"You're awake! I wasn't sure you would be. I brought the rest of your uniforms," Genya said, holding a paper bag and walking past Alina into the room.

"Thanks," Alina smiled.

"And– exciting! – there's a party for the ambassador on Saturday night!"  


"Yay?"

Genya rolled her eyes and sat on the chair at Alina's vanity. "I don't know what else you think you're going to do on a cold night in Os Alta, so I highly recommend getting used to making parties a regular part of your winter schedule. Besides, parties are way less boring than state dinners. Mostly because there's dancing."

Alina paled a little bit. "I don't .... I don't dance." She thought back to her first month at university when she had attended an evening event for the new freshman. She'd shown up thinking it would be a good way to meet other students but hadn't anticipated the dance floor. It took all of three songs before she realized she had no idea what she was doing and went back to her apartment to wait for Mal to get off his shift. She hadn't attempted dancing since.

"You  _don't dance?_ " Genya's eyes were wide with horror. "Are you even Ravkan?"  


"I know," Alina groaned. "I just ... never learned." She had a vague memory of being a kindergartener and running through the lines her parents' friends made on the dance floor at a wedding. There had been a blue skirt that shimmered in the light; she approached it, hand outstretched – and the memory ended, abruptly, as all her memories from before she moved into foster care did. She didn't mind. She'd worked hard to keep from falling into a pit of despair after her parents had died. If the cost was keeping her memories locked away in a place where they were just accessible in small bits, and only occasionally, that was a price she was more than willing to pay. 

"We need to remedy this before Saturday night. At an event like this, dancing really isn't optional." Genya counted off the absolutely crucial dances on her fingers. "I think we can make do with teaching you just four. That should be doable Thursday and Friday evenings." 

"I don't know – I have a lot of work to do." Alina nodded at the papers still on her desk, then grimaced. "And Ravkan lessons."

"Have those gotten any better?"

"Not really," Alina admitted, which she thought was a pretty charitable description given that it was the most dreaded hour of her day. The woman teaching her seemed to think that glaring at her would somehow make her better at Ravkan. It seemed to Alina a dubious method of instruction at best.

"Then you'll want to relax with some dancing afterwards."

"I'm not sure dancing is going to be relaxing." 

"It will be  _fine_ ," Genya said, standing and stroking Alina's arm. "I'll meet you at the end of your lesson tomorrow." She was halfway out the door before she turned around. "You do know how to waltz, right?" When Alina shook her head, she sighed. "Growing up in America sounds awful. We'll see what we can do to fix this right away."  


* * *

Alina was distracted at her Ravkan lesson on Friday, a fact which the woman teaching her must have realized because she gave Alina a few extra glares. Alina had made some progress figuring out where to place the test solar cells, and she had made some progress replicating Solnyshko once the materials had arrived, but it was all going much slower than she'd hoped. She had really wanted to have something concrete to show at the end of week one, and she didn't.

She was enjoying the people, though. Nadia and Marie were nice enough when Zoya wasn't around and Harshaw and his team were turning out to be delightful to work with. Alina could watch Harshaw explain the combustion mechanisms in his batteries for hours – he talked about energy conversion the way Alina thought about solar cells, as something so integral, so a  _part_  of him that it was almost like he was almost sharing a memory.   


The day before, when Zoya was upset about how long it was taking to make a particular prototype and spent a while informing the person working on it how much faster she could have done it herself, Harshaw had given Alina a look. "Too bad we can't harness hot air," he said under his breath. "Our  _leytenant_  could single-handedly power the country."  


Alina had snorted and quickly busied herself with a particularly difficult equation when Zoya had whirled around. When she had risked a glance over to Harshaw, he'd winked.

And she'd be meeting up with Genya this evening – maybe she should judge her first week by making friends, instead. She definitely hoped no one was judging it on the progress she had made in Ravkan, which was just about zero. She made another mistake repeating the words that her teacher was saying, and her teacher sighed. That, at least, was something Alina understood.

* * *

"Okay. We're going to try something a little different today." Genya was stretching her arms out, side to side. Alina glanced around the common room and saw that it was, thankfully, relatively empty. Genya had tried to teach her dances in Alina's tiny room the evening before and Alina had a shin full of bruises to show for it. Friday night most of the soldiers who had parents went home for the weekend. The ones that didn't were either working or at a series of bars, leaving the common room open for dance practice. There were a few people on one end of the room reading, but the two women had most of the floor to themselves. "I've noticed that you seem a little stiff when you dance."

Alina shrugged. "I came here to engineer, not spin around in circles with strangers." 

Genya pulled a face. "No, see, it's exactly that sort of attitude that we need to change. You're always going to be uncomfortable if that's how you think of it. So I brought something to help." She reached into a bag and pulled out a bottle. "Stoli has over half a century of experience helping awkward dancers get better." Genya produced two glasses, poured a couple fingers of the vodka into each, and held one out to Alina.

"Really?" Alina asked. "You're getting me drunk so I suck less at dancing?"

"Not  _drunk_ ," Genya corrected. "Just ... relaxed."  


Alina took the glass and clinked it against Genya's. Genya shot it, and Alina followed suit. It burned going down, and she coughed while Genya pressed play on the first song on her computer. "Alright, from the top!"

Alina had to acknowledge that the dances Genya was teaching her were lovely – there was a simplicity and fluidity to the moves when Genya did them that hinted at a larger elegance. Genya guided Alina though the moves, counting the beats, reminding her when to spin, when to touch hands, when to move to the next partner in the line. Though there were four different dances, none had more than twenty-four distinct beats to learn and Alina was starting to get hold of the steps if not the spirit.

Truth be told, Alina enjoyed most of the steps. It was the touching hands she was less fond of.

The dances were line dances, performed with the person across the line from you, and most of them involved holding up your hand and touching it to your partner's palm. This wasn't a problem for Alina on her left side, but her right hand ... well.

A half hour later, Alina was apparently not relaxed enough and Genya poured them each another few fingers of vodka. Once Alina had finished coughing, Genya spoke. 

"It's not that bad." 

"Of course you think that – it's your vodka."

"No, I mean your scar," Genya said, and shrugged. "It's not that bad."

Alina flushed. "It's that obvious?"

"It's obvious that you don't like holding out your hand, which means that my attention is drawn straight to it. And it's not that bad."

Alina reflexively rubbed her thumb across her palm. Genya was wrong – it  _was_  a bad scar, still red and knotted after decades. Alina had been self-conscious about it her whole life, and she gave thanks almost daily that she was left-handed. She had a lifetime of practice of positioning her hand to keep her scar hidden, and when that was impossible, of using misdirection to draw attention away from it. The dance moves that mean putting her palm up in front of her partner to give them an unobstructed view went against everything she'd trained herself to do.  


"It is. Bad." Alina felt awkward. She cleared her throat. 

"How did you get it?" Genya's voice was low, and Alina knew she was leaving the option for Alina to pretend to not have heard. 

"I don't know. Well, I do know, kind of, but – I had a cut there. When I was, you know. Found." When her adoptive parents had brought her to America, most of the doctors said it would be more risky to operate on the hand of someone so young than to let the body try to heal itself. Mal had just finished the first Harry Potter book when he noticed her scar for the first time, nearly a year after they met, and a swift kick to his shin kept him from repeating his new nickname for her of "the girl who lived."

Genya nodded and was silent for a moment. Then she smiled. "Another shot of vodka to help you forget about it?"

Alina laughed, beginning to feel the effects of the first two. "No, I can do this. I think I can. Let's try it again."

An hour later, they'd gone through all four dances to Genya's satisfaction and had begun the waltz. Genya instructed her on the steps and arm positions; as Genya held Alina's right hand, she either didn't notice or didn't comment on the stiffness of Alina's last two fingers. She was grateful.

Alina didn't pick up the waltz as quickly, and after another forty minutes and another shot of vodka Genya plopped into a chair. "Dancing is exhausting."

"No kidding." Alina gratefully sank into the chair next to her and lay her head back, her face slightly warm. "How'd I do?"

"Better than yesterday. Keep up this rate of improvement and we'll have you in national competitions next week."

The vodka made that seem funnier than it would have otherwise, and Alina giggled. She'd made it through her first week, and though she'd only left the states eight days ago it already felt like a lifetime. She turned her head towards the other woman suddenly. "Why are you doing this for me?"

Genya didn't lift her head from where she was fanning herself. "Because you're an awful dancer."

"No, I mean, why are you helping me at all? You could just have shown me to my lab and not seen me again. But you tailored my uniforms and brought me a sandwich and taught me to dance."

"You're questioning my motives for being nice to you. The American foster system must be a rougher place than I thought."

"I'm not questioning your motives ... exactly." Alina blushed; she was clearly fumbling and the alcohol wasn't helping her express herself any better. "It's not every day that someone goes out of their way for me. And I wanted to understand why."

Genya settled herself to face Alina. "I started working with  _Dzhenral_  Morozova back when he was  _Sardzhent_. I've followed him across divisions, titles. Continents. He's obsessed with Ravka and with the idea that things can be better. He thinks about it incessantly. He's not an emotive man," Alina gave a bark of laughter and Genya's smile acknowledged the understatement, "and it's the one thing I've seen him be truly passionate about. But I hadn't seen him be  _hopeful_  before. Not until he met you."  


Genya's gaze held Alina's and she exhaled.  _No pressure or anything_. "Solar power in Ravka seems like an odd choice of something to be hopeful about. Betting on Solnyshko is such a long shot in so many ways."  


"Perhaps," the other woman acknowledged. "But the general's long shots have a way of working out." Then she gave the grin that Alina had come to associate with being poured another shot of vodka. "And when  _solnyskho_  is up and running, I have a feeling I'm going to really enjoy the look on Nazyalensky's face."  


* * *

_"How's she doing?"_

_"Fine, she's doing fine. Settling in."_

_"Anything noteworthy?"_

_"She said she's making some progress, good for the first week. It doesn't seem like she's sleeping much."_

_"Expected with the time change. Updates from her lieutenant?"_

_"Zoya made a gesture when I asked, but only with one finger so it's not clear what she was trying to convey."_ Silence. A sigh.  _"That was a joke."_

_"I took it as such. How are other things?"_

_"Fine. Terrible."_

_"You have it handled?"_

_"To the extent possible."_

_"You'll let me know if you don't."_

_"_ Da _,_ Dzhenral _."_

* * *

Alina was working on the problem sets for her classes when Genya showed up the next afternoon. Alina blinked and looked at the clock.

"We don't need to be at the event for nearly two hours."

"I know, but I had something I wanted to try." Genya dragged the second chair over towards where Alina sat at the desk. "Hold out your hand." Alina put out her hand and Genya glanced up at her. "Your other hand."

  
_Ah_. Alina sighed and put her right hand, face up, on Genya's knees. Genya reached into her bag and produced an assortment of bottles and brushes that she laid out on the desk. She held up Alina's palm, traced a finger along the scar. "Can I see your computer for a minute?"  


Alina handed over her laptop. Genya typed for a few moments before putting it back on the desk and adjusting the screen. Alina knit her brows together. "What's this?"

"An episode of  _Sherlock_ ," she said, taking Alina's hand and picking up a brush. "This is going to take a while."  


After nearly an hour, the ending credits rolled and Genya stood and stretched. Alina had kept her eyes focused on the screen but hadn't really seen anything that happened. Her heart felt like a bird trapped in her ribcage. 

"It's safe to look."

Alina took a breath and looked down quickly, before glancing back up at Genya. She looked down again.

"It's ..."

"Not that bad?" Genya suggested.

It was better than not bad. Alina could feel the scar when she traced her finger over it, but –

"Thank you," she whispered, then laughed as she felt tears stinging her eyes.

"This doesn't mean that you should skimp on the vodka," Genya pointed out. "You're still likely to be a terrible dancer without it." Genya rolled her neck and shook out her shoulders. "Now go get dressed. We have a party to attend."

* * *

Like the state dinner the week before, the party was hosted at the president's palace. When they arrived this time, they were ushered right instead of left, into a ballroom even larger than the R&D labs. The ceilings, covered in mosaics inlaid with gold, arched high above their heads. One side of the wall had murals of what looked to be Ravkan historical figures, and the other side was floor-to-ceiling windows with a stunning view of Os Alta. A small orchestra was setting up in front of one of the paintings. Just ten minutes after the event began the room was already crowded. 

Genya led the way towards the wall with a long bar set up on one side of it. Alina hovered behind her and Genya turned around with two shot glasses of vodka. She handed both to Alina, then turned back around with two of her own.

"Don't embarrass me out there, Starkov," she said, clinking their glasses lightly. Alina coughed after drinking the vodka again and Genya pat her back lightly. "You'll get used to it."

Across the room there were two large groups of people. Alina vaguely made out the ambassador in the middle of one of them, and she supposed the president was in the other. Ivan – easy to spot thanks to his impressive mass – stood to one side looking a little uncomfortable and somewhat bored. Genya and Alina made their way over to him, where Ivan gave the sargeant a cursory nod. He and Genya spoke quietly in Ravkan.

Alina stumbled as she was bumped hard from the back, and turned to see her lieutenant regaining her footing.

"Watch where you're going,  _Sardzhent._ "  


"Um," Alina said. 

"She wasn't going anywhere, Zoya," Genya cut in with a small smile. "It seems like the collision might have been on your end."

Zoya's eyes narrowed. "Was it? You might want to be particularly careful the other end of the collision isn't  _you_  later this evening."  


"Was that a threat?"

"Did it not sound enough like one?"

Genya laughed lightly. "Even  _I_  don't think you're stupid enough to threaten me in front of Ivan."  


Zoya looked the man up and down before twisting her lips suggestively. "I’m pretty sure I could handle him."

Genya rolled her eyes. "You  _do_  know that fucking someone's brains out doesn't actually incapacitate them, right?"  


A strangled sound coming from Ivan’s throat indicated he objected to this topic of conversation.

Zoya casually lifted one shoulder before sauntering off. "It'd be worth a try."

Alina watched her go. "It seems like you get along with her almost as well as I do."

Before Genya had a chance to respond, the orchestra struck an opening chord. Alina caught Ivan's almost pitying gaze as Genya grabbed her wrist and dragged her onto the dance floor.

"Ivan isn't dancing? Maybe I should keep him company."

Her efforts were rewarded with a snort. "Not a chance. I've devoted hours of my life to teaching you to dance and you  _will dance_."  


"Why doesn't Ivan have to, though?"

"He's packing." She continued in response to Alina's eyebrows knitting together. "Americans say that, right? Or is that just in the movies?"

Alina searched her memories. "Like he's packing  _heat?_ "  


"He's got a gun," Genya clarified, following up with an exasperated sigh. "And apparently no one teaches men to dance with weapons."

The lines formed quickly, and the music started in earnest soon after. It took Alina a few beats to figure out which dance it was, but she followed Genya's movements and was able to successfully complete the steps without falling or making too big a fool of herself. A few songs later, the vodka had started to warm her stomach and she found her muscles remembered the moves without much effort on her part. 

_This is what it's like_ , she thought, raising a hand to that of the person across from her, _to belong to a group._  To be herself. To not be disfigured by war.   


For a while she lost herself in a sea of people moving in time, pushing and pulling against the same forces, providing a canvas for their partner. With so many people, it was possible for her to see the dance in a way that hadn't been apparent the night before – as its own universe with a set of rules, a collection of particles with defined actions and reactions as they passed from one person's hands to the next. 

By the time the orchestra took their first break, the curls Genya hadn't pinned up onto Alina's head were sticking lightly to the back of her neck. Alina stood, fanning herself, as Genya smiled at a server and was rewarded with two glasses of champagne.

When the orchestra restarted, they played a waltz. Genya bowed deeply towards Alina before offering her hand. Alina, lightheaded and flushed from the dancing and the alcohol, attempted a curtsy before resting her arm on Genya's and following her lead. She stepped carefully until Genya interrupted her.

"Stop looking at your feet," Genya prompted. "Look at me."

Alina did. Genya smiled and moved them in a circle around the room, past where Ivan scanned the crowd, past the large open window. The dance floor was full but the dancers were skilled, moving easily out of each other's way. The circles surrounding the president and the ambassador –  _the_   _general_ , Alina corrected herself – had grown, both men completely surrounded.   


The president emerged a few songs later to give a long-winded and vaguely inebriated speech in Ravkan, and Alina let her eyes wander over crowd as he spoke. To one side stood a group that was clearly the political faction: they were slightly older, men dressed in expensive suits and the women smartly made up with rhinestoned scarves covering their hair. Some of the other guests were in military dress outfits, and of those who weren't it was clear from the way they carried themselves that many of them were there as soldiers, as well. On Alina's left was a group that was neither clearly political nor military. The second time the president's speech was punctuated by drunken cheers from that group, she leaned over and asked Genya who they were. Genya commented without looking, disapproval evident in her tone: " _Divizioniki_."  


The room applauded loudly at the end of the president's speech. Alina suddenly felt overwhelmed by the crowd and excused herself from Genya, slipping to one side of the room. She stood against the wall as the dancing started again, watching couples weave between each other on the crowded floor. Waltzing, she decided, was less of an organized universe than the folk dances. Less of an elegant give and take.

"Enjoying the festivities from a distance?"

She jumped when he spoke, his voice close to her ear. The general was standing next to her, head leaning against the wall, gaze locked on her. His casual stance and inattention to the people glancing his way only made his command of the room more obvious. She wondered how long he'd been there. "Something like that," she mumbled, blushing. "You've been surrounded all evening – how did you manage to escape the crowd?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "I dismissed them."

_Ah_. She turned back towards the dance floor and didn't let herself look at him again, though she saw other people turn to stare. She fought the heat rising from her chest as the song ended and the next began.  


He pushed off from the wall and faced her, extending a hand. Her desire to avoid dancing was at war with her desire to find out what would happen to her division; she was desperately curious, and after only half a second of internal struggle, the curious side of her won out. 

_Of course it did._  It also had getting to dance with a crushingly attractive man on its side.  


She took his hand and let him lead her to the dance floor. He rested a hand on her waist and she began dancing, doing her best to not seem nervous. He was a good dancer and a great partner; she found her body following his steps easily, almost mindlessly.

Though it felt awkward to her, dancing in silence didn't seem to bother him. She searched for a way to start a conversation. "Congratulations," she offered.

He glanced down at her. "For what?"

"Your promotion. Or, whatever it is. It is a promotion, right?"

"Of sorts." He guided them out of the way of a somewhat inebriated couple – Alina thought she recognized the president's uncle Genya had pointed out the weekend before. 

"I heard that there may be changes for  _Energiya Proteksiya_  and the larger populace protection division." It was a question, but he just lifted a corner of his lips.  


"Did you."

"There are rumors," she prompted. "Though depending on who you listen to it will either be great for us or a disaster."

"And you take these rumors seriously?"

"Are you saying they're wrong?"

"At least one of them must be."

It wasn't an answer, of course. There was more silence in which Alina bemoaned her inability to stealthily acquire information, but her internal monologue was interrupted by the general. "How have you found your first week?"

Alina shrugged, which caused her to lose her place in the dance. The pressure on her waist increased slightly as he helped her recover her footing. "It's been an adjustment. The more I learn, the more I realize there are going to be a lot of challenges. Ravka really doesn't seem like an ideal candidate for solar power."

"If we were, we wouldn't have needed you." A few bars of music played. "I hear there's already good progress on replicating  _solnyshko_  in our labs."  


Alina raised an eyebrow. "And you take that rumor seriously?" He looked at her for a moment before letting out a low laugh. Something in her stomach knotted – or maybe unknotted – in response. She didn't dislike the feeling. "There has been, but mostly I've just had horrible hand cramps all week from filling out requisition forms in triplicate."

He nodded. "Any other complaints?"

She glanced up at him, thinking he was making light of her comment, but his face showed no hint of amusement. "I'm ... um ... pretty sure my lieutenant hates me."

"Nazyalensky," he confirmed, and Alina nodded.

A few moments later, the song ended and he released her with a small bow. "Thank you for the dance, Alina."

She bowed back slightly, feeling ridiculous. "I was hoping to learn what you were planning to do with my division, but you somehow managed to give nothing away."

His mouth moved into what might have been a smile. "Then you weren't paying attention, Alina."

* * *

Genya had found Alina shortly after the song ended and let her know she'd be staying a bit longer, so Alina had returned to the barracks on her own. Back in her room, Alina gently scrubbed the makeup off her hand, revealing her scar as raw and red as it had always been. As she lay in bed, she listened to the sounds of  _Keramat Sedzet_  on a Saturday night: the people returning from the party at the president's, returning from bars, laughter lazily making its way from the sidewalk to her window. She began to float into unconsciousness, and in her half-awake state realized that she hadn't reached out for Mal tonight. She fell asleep smiling.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW! This became much longer than I had planned – I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think ~*~


	7. Chapter 7

When Alina showed up at the lab at seven thirty Monday morning it was already crowded, though no one was working. Divisions were huddled together around tables, and while some were speaking quietly many were silent, fidgeting. She found her own group and slid into a space between Harshaw and Nadia. Harshaw gave her a nod, and Nadia just looked at her, eyes wide.

"What's going on?" Alina felt foolish for whispering, but the room was quiet, heavy with anticipation.

"There was a six A.M. meeting for lieutenants and majors in R&D. We're waiting." 

Marie tapped her fingernails in a rapid pattern on the countertop. The private standing next to her was part of Harshaw's team, and Alina was irritated at herself for not spending enough time on the alphabet to make out his name from his uniform. She watched the lines of his face become tighter with every tap until finally his hand snatched out and grabbed Marie's to still it. She yanked her hand away and snapped at him in Ravkan. He frowned slightly and Nadia put a hand on Marie's forearm. Marie, who had already resumed the rapid _tat-tat-tat-tat_ pattern with the nails on her other hand, looked like she would snap at Nadia, too, but after a moment where no one breathed, Marie let her shoulders relax. She rested her face in her palms and was, mercifully, silent.

Harshaw shifted his weight slightly. In the heavy quiet the air snapped and cracked – after a second, Alina recognized it as the sound of a few dozen commanders shuffling back into the lab, but in the time it took for her consciousness to register what it was her sympathetic nervous system had kicked into high gear and she could feel her pulse beating hard in her throat.  _What on earth had she thought that was?_  


Craning her neck, she could see the commanders splitting away into small groups. She caught a glimpse of Zoya walking with a few other lieutenants and the Major Tupolev, head of the Populace Security division. Zoya's eyes were bright, her face set hard and unreadable, and when she glanced their way she jerked her head towards where the two other Populace Security groups waited.  _Energiya Proteksiya_  stood and joined the others.  


As they arrived, Major Tupolev dropped a stack of papers on the table in front of her. There was an immediate scramble for the papers; as they were passed back Alina glanced at the one Nadia held, and saw it was a one-pager in the style of a memo. It was in Ravkan, so while Nadia scanned it quickly Alina studied the signature at the bottom of the page. It wasn't like the signatures she had gotten used to seeing on campus: embellished attempts at erudition, a few words full of their own self-importance. There was only one word and letters in the signature were close together and small, rendered almost indistinguishable by the thick tip of a felt pen. The author had doubled back with a bold underline that Alina read like the ending of a Supreme Court opinion:  _It is so ordered._  


There were a few more seconds of silence as the group rapidly read through the memo. Alina watched as Nadia looked up at Tupolev and Nazyalensky, eyes wide. Zoya met Nadia's gaze, and for the first time the lieutenant cracked a smile. There was a small, startled laugh from someone on the major's other side, and Alina was suddenly pressed in a group of people who were clapping each other on the shoulder, laughing, rapid Ravkan breaking the tension.

She looked at Nadia, who smiled.

* * *

 

The doors were quickly papered with lists of reassignments. Weapons R&D had been all but shut down; just a handful of people were staying and everyone else was reassigned to populace protection measures. Harshaw had translated what he called the poetic heart of the memo for Alina:  _as Ravka's weaponry has not kept us safe this last decade, as people cannot eat guns or light their homes with bullets, so we will prioritize advances in medicine, so we will turn to focus on generating electricity._  


The new reporting structure was effective as of the next day, with everyone from weapons R&D given Monday to wrap up their projects and put their ideas into storage. There was some complaining and grumbling from the weapons divisions, but ultimately less than Alina had expected – there was an order, and they were following it. She thought back to the conversation she'd had with the general on her second day:  _everyone in Ravka is a soldier._  She supposed it was true.  


Alina spent part of Monday afternoon examining a reassignment list, transliterating and memorizing the names of the five people who would report to her in the morning. Her division wasn't the largest by a long shot – Zoya had nearly a hundred new people in her division dedicated to wind and water power, and even Harshaw had gotten several dozen to focus on energy storage. 

She abandoned for the day her attempts at reproducing Solnyshko and started planning how to get the new people up to speed and working quickly. She didn't know what sort of backgrounds they had , but everyone she'd met in R&D had a solid grasp of mathematics and physics; even if they'd never seen a photovoltaic cell before she was hopeful that they'd get the basic concepts without much of a problem.  


She spent a while planning how to introduce her team to solar power, and this was what she found herself thinking about during a throughly unproductive Ravkan lesson. Her teacher frowned deeply as Alina stumbled over even the most simple syllables, but Alina couldn't bring herself to focus on what she was supposed to be doing. She was preoccupied enough that as she walked out of her lesson, she didn't notice the person standing in the hallway.

"Alina."

She jumped, then swore quietly when she saw who it was. The general was leaning against the wall, a stack of manilla folders under one arm, hair falling slightly onto his face. She was glad she had the surprise of him speaking to account for the racing of her heart. "Do you enjoy startling me?"

"Not particularly." He pushed off from the wall and started down the corridor. "I wanted to discuss what happened today and what it means for  _solnyshko_."  


She followed him down the hallway, through the underground tunnels and into a neighboring building. They walked up the stairs to the top floor, down a hall past three sets of guards who stood straight as the general passed. The guards acknowledged him with a short head nod – what Alina was coming to think of as the Ravkan salute – and addressed him as  _Dzhenral._ The general greeted each of them by name.   


He opened a door just beyond the last guards into what Alina assumed was his office. It was a nice office and clearly military – the furniture was heavy, dark, and sparse. The windows framed a view was of the barracks, sporadically lit against the cobalt background of a winter evening. He motioned for her to sit in a chair facing the desk as he sat in a larger chair behind it.

She waited for him to speak, but he sat silently, watching her with the same expression he'd had at the state dinner the week before.  She tried to hold his gaze and wished, not for the first time, that she didn't find him so damn  _attractive._  When her neck began to flush she looked away and cleared her throat, speaking just to distract herself. "So there was a big shift in priorities."   


"Yes."

"My lieutenant is pretty pleased to have gotten about a hundred new people working on wind power. It seems like there's going to be a lot happening there."

"Wind power is useless to Ravka right now."

Alina moved her gaze from the wall back to the general and blinked, the surprise making it easier for her to not worry as much about the line of his jaw. He nodded in acknowledgement at her surprise. "The turbines take close to a year to install, are too expensive to manufacture, and are too obvious as targets if Fjerda or Shu Han decides to bomb us. I'm counting on  _solnyshko_  being cheaper, faster, and less enticing as a target."  


"Why did you only give me a five people to work on it then?" 

"I've given you the five best people. You'll be able to do more with them than Zoya can do with her hundred."

"Does she know that?"

"Of course."

"Then why is she going around acting like she's just been crowned queen of Ravka?"

He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting. It made no sense to her to devote so many people to something that wouldn't be useful, and so few to her own. But if they were really the best –  "You've given her a way to save face." He nodded. "That's very ... politic."

"The technical aspects of  _solnyshko_  will be challenging, but ultimately the battle will be political."   


"Politics has never been a strong point for me."

"You might want to make it one, quickly." His smile was humorless. "I don't take this lightly, Alina. Bringing you here wasn't cheap."

Alina snorted. "I saw how much you're paying me – that's hardly a huge expense."

"Some things cost more than just money."

It hadn't occurred to her that he might have had to fight to get her here, that all of Ravka wouldn't have been behind this idea. But he was watching her, waiting again, and she thought through the problem more. It didn't matter if all of Ravka wanted electricity. There was only one person that would have mattered, that could have made him spend that sort of political capital. "The president isn't interested in solar power?"

"He couldn't care less about whether or not the villages have reliable electricity."

She furrowed her brow. This didn't make sense. "Why did he put you in charge of the military then?"

"I promised results on a short timeline."

"And that's enough?"

"When you have a history of delivering, yes. And because I've agreed to take public responsibility for the entire thing."

She was beginning to follow what he was saying. "And thus  all the blame if it fails." He nodded again. "The military objectives you've proposed involve making sure the villages have reliable power how?"  


"You don't know Ravka, you don't know the people, but you will. We are near a breaking point. And no wonder – countries don't survive wars intact. That's not fundamentally what war  _is_. If we don't prioritize building up ourselves rather than simply reacting to every border skirmish and bombing, in another decade there won't be anything left for Fjerda and Shu Han to destroy."  


"So what results did you promise for Solnyshko?"

"Fewer than five interruptions in electricity supply a year for everyone in Ravka."

"I've heard that. What timeline?"

He leaned back in his chair. "By next winter."

Her jaw dropped. "Next winter? That's barely a year and a half from now! Given the amount of time it would take to manufacture and install, you're asking for the most developed solar system nine, maybe ten months from now. That's  _impossible_!"  


"It had better not be impossible, Alina." His voice was quiet, measured. "If this doesn't work, the president knows who to blame it on. It will be an unpleasant and dangerous time for me."

His gaze said there was more to it than that. When she spoke she discovered that her mouth was dry. "And for me."

He nodded slightly.

She put her head in her hands and groaned. The general hadn't specified what blame entailed, but she had a good guess that it would be meaningfully more severe than a slap on the wrist.

"But this will work, Alina." She looked up and saw him, intent but still relaxed, still certain. "It will work, and you and I will change the world." He lifted one side of his lips into a ghost of a smile. "Or at least this corner of it."

* * *

  
Alina's division, when it was assembled, was ... motley. There wasn't another word for it.  


There was Sergei, lanky with hollowed cheeks, who was sitting with his arms crossed and a look that said he'd rather be anywhere but here. Davna, whose face Alina didn't see for the first hour because she didn't look up from her notebook that entire time. Alexei and Eva, the only two who had identical insignia on their arms. Alina knew their full names and so knew that they weren't twins, though at first glance they'd seemed androgynous and nearly identical – it wasn't until she saw them walk across the room that she realized the whole similarity was in their mannerisms and the way they moved. Ana alternated twirling a lock of shockingly black hair around her fingers and picking at her nails with a clearly non-army-issue switchblade.

Alina steeled herself for a very long day – and likely, she thought, a very long year. She hoped General Morozova knew what he was doing.

* * *

It took her about ten minutes to realize that the group she was talking to was significantly better than her lab back in America. She had prepared a lecture on how standard solar cells works, and she launched into the explanation; she wanted to ensure that the group understood the basics before she switched to discussing Solnyshko. She was only on the second bullet point before Sergei spoke.

"If the whole premise of generating electricity on the sun relies on the photons separating electrons from their atoms, isn't there going to be a huge inefficiency when a photon hits the semiconductor and  _doesn't_  come into contact with an atom?"  


Eva chimed in. "And even if you have charges on each side of the semiconductor, won't some of those electrons just rejoin atoms that are missing them before they make it to the charge conductors?" Alexei nodded.

"Not to mention the photons that are reflected rather than actually making it to the semiconductor in the first place," Davna grumbled, hair obscuring her face as she bent low over her notebook.

Ana flicked at her fingernail with her switchblade. "I'd have to imagine none of those things are as big a problem as the huge spectrum of wavelengths that are hitting the panel. You can't possibly have a semiconductor that will be able to appropriately capture energy from all of those – probably not even most of them."

Alina, eyes wide, nodded. "Those are all reasons for energy inefficiency in solar power."

"Rather than wasting our time explaining the problems that have already been solved by everyone else," Ana pointed the tip of the knife at Alina, "how about you tell us what's different about  _solnyshko_  and what the problems that  _haven't_  been solved yet are."  


Alina felt a bubble rising from her stomach, a feeling she couldn't identify until it came out of her as laughter. She clamped a hand over her mouth before doubling over. Alexei and Eva cast each other glances out of the corner of their eyes, and Sergei and Ana stared at her with something between concern and disdain. But she couldn't stop laughing. The general  _had_  given her the five best people. The doubts that had been creeping at the corners of her mind the last couple weeks suddenly disappeared. She felt light.  


Eventually, she wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Alright, then," she said, in between the remaining giggles. "Let's start with talking about the band gap."

* * *

A couple hours into their discussion Zoya came by. She'd been strutting around like she owned the place all day – Alina figured she'd been working on that look of smug condescension for a while, waiting for a chance to use it.

"How's it going over here?"

Alina straightened, dipped her head. "We're going over background,  _Leytenant._ "  


"Don't spend too much time talking. You'll want to get to work soon."

Alina nodded again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Ana had leaned back from where she'd been poring over documents on the table and had once more gotten out her switchblade, flicking it back and forth between her fingers. Alina cleared her throat to keep Zoya's attention on her. "Anything else,  _Leytenant?_ "  


"Oh, yes." Zoya feigned distraction as she reached into a bag and let several metal discs clatter onto the table.

"What's this?"

"Your new insignia." She tossed her curls over her shoulder. "Clearly  _Energiya Proteksiya_ 's insignia doesn't make sense for you. You've been given these instead." Alexei and Eva had both picked up the pins and were examining them curiously. "You've also been given priority for materials so you won't need to fill out any more forms. You can just email what you want and they'll bring it."  


Alina blinked. Perhaps she hadn't been paying attention during their dance, but the general clearly had been. Though this was obviously his doing, she remembered what he said the night before about being politic. "That's wonderful. Thank you."

Zoya shrugged. "I hope it's worth it. Get to work."

When Alina turned back to the table, she picked up a pin of her own and examined it – it was a gold-colored disc, about the size of her palm, with a large circle asymmetrically punched out in the middle. She could see the resemblance to a sun, but she wasn't sure why it wasn't solid.

She looked up to see Sergei biting the pin gently between his teeth. "Is this thing gold?"

Davna snorted, and Alina noticed the pin was already on her shirt, perfectly straight. "Definitely not."

Eva traced a finger around the inside of the pin. "It's an eclipse."  Alina looked down and realized that it did seem to be that exactly. "Why an eclipse?" 

Alina affixed it onto her own shirt. "We'll find out soon. But let's get back to work." She smiled. "I want to start requesting some materials."

 

* * *

 

The general was waiting in the hallway after her Ravkan lesson the next day, reading the papers in his manilla folders. This time she saw him before he had a chance to startle her. "Can I expect this to be a regular occurrence?"

He fell into step beside her. "Nazyalensky updates me in the afternoon. I'll expect updates from you after your lesson."

"Every day?"

"Yes."

"That's too often."

"That's too often,  _Dzhenral_ ," he corrected.   


" _Dzhenral_ ," she mumbled. She had the forethought to turn her head away from him before rolling her eyes.  


"This is a priority . I want to know what's happening and if you need anything from me."  


"I hate to disappoint you but I don't have much to report today. We just spent the morning being confused about the new insignia." She was teasing, of course, but it had bothered her more than she cared to admit. 

He replied dryly. "A good use of your time, no doubt."

"If it were a sun shining brightly it would make sense, but an eclipse is a little odd for a division devoted to solar power. An obscured sun is the opposite of what we need to happen."

"Solar panels aren't graphically pleasing."

"And an eclipse makes sense because?"

"It's a metaphor." She raised her eyebrows and he raised his in return. "The sun coming out from behind the shadow of war."

She blinked, then opened her mouth and closed it again. "That's oddly poetic."

"We're all pleased you enjoy the poetry,  _Sardzhent_ Starkov. Let me worry about the symbols; you focus on  _solnyshko._  I want a real update tomorrow."

 

* * *

The first time Alina went to Genya's room, she was surprised. Genya lived in the building next to Alina, and her room was identical, down to the empty walls. Alina had expected her to have decorated her space, to have made it more of a home, but there were no personal flourishes, nothing other than a well-stocked closet and makeup drawer to betray that someone lived there. Genya had Alina stand in the middle of the room and put on a prototype of a new uniform. She pinned around Alina while Alina held herself awkwardly, unmoving.

"I heard there's another party at the president's palace this weekend."

"Mmm," Genya said through the pins in her mouth. She took them out and stepped back to look at her handiwork. "It's a Saturday, so of course there is."

"How is that possible? The country is at war and every weekend the president throws huge balls that everyone shows up to – can Ravka afford this? Is he spending his own money?"

Genya snorted and moved to Alina's back, grabbing more fabric to pin. "It's not his own money, that's for sure."

"Then how is he doing this? Won't people vote him out of office?"

"After the election results were tallied last year, over seventy percent of eligible Ravkan voters voted for him."

" _Seventy percent_  of eligible voters? America can't even get seventy percent of voters to the polls."  


Genya was silent for a moment, and Alina felt another tug on the fabric. When she spoke again, her voice was low. "Voter turnout was estimated to be thirty percent."

_Oh_. "So he just completely falsified the election results."  


Genya turned Alina to face her, and Alina was surprised to see her uncharacteristically serious. "He will never be voted out of office. He and his  _divizioniki_ will run Ravka into the ground. This country is nothing to them."  


"This is why the general is fighting for populace protection measures, then."

Genya nodded, then sighed and ran a hand through Alina's hair. "Stay out of Ravkan politics if you can, Alina. It's a dangerous place to be."

* * *

The first four days with her new division had been a practice in coordinated chaos. Davna had come from the division that built the prototypes for the R&D ideas, and she took over the reproduction of Solnyshko from Alina. When Alina had shown her what she'd done so far, she had studied the workspace and the cell closely before speaking. She shook her head lightly. "It's a good thing you have me," was the only thing she said before tearing a sheet of paper from her notebook and scribbling a list nearly forty items long. "These are the things I need. Get them for me."

Sergei began focusing on how to make sure atoms were always in the path of incoming photos, and Eva and Alexei started work on a plan to tilt the panels to always be perpendicular to the sun's rays, as well as where to put some test panels to get solar measurements.

"Why are you measuring the sunlight at specific locations?" Harshaw had asked her over lunch one day. "We know the angle of the sun's rays and the tilt of the earth – can't you just figure that out?"

"We can do those calculations, and we have," Alina explained. "But those are the best case scenarios and they miss all the environmental variables. The composition of the atmosphere over Ravka matters, and how often it's cloudy and how thick those clouds are. Not to mention things like atmospheric dust and pollen, which both prevent light from reaching the cell and compound that problem over time as particles settle on the glass that covers the cell."

Harshaw sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Batteries are so much nicer. Energy in, energy out. It's mostly a closed system."

Ana had started looking into ways to keep electrons from recombining with atoms on the way to the edges of the semiconductors, but one day Alina found her glancing over her shoulder as she worked. Alina had decided to focus on the central problem that Ana had identified the first day: that a semiconductor will only be able to absorb energy from certain wavelengths of light. Solnyshko as currently imagined was a multijunction cell which meant that it had several layered semiconductors each capable of capturing energy from different wavelengths. This improved performance somewhat, but was typical of photovoltaic cells and wasn't nearly as good as it needed to be; Solnyshko was still dropping energy on the floor, and Alina needed to fix that. She was reading a paper that had come out the week before that examined the possibilities for a theoretical cell with an infinite number of junctions – significantly more than the handful Solnyshko currently had.

Ana snorted in disgust as she read the paper over Alina's shoulder. "Why even discuss what could be possible with an infinite number of junctions since it's definitionally impossible to build a cell like that?"

"Taking things to a theoretical extreme can help us identify the weaknesses in our own ideas," Alina pointed out.

Ana looked at her like she was an idiot. "Yeah, obviously. But it's not going to actually get anything built. So what are you going to do with it?"

Alina tapped the tip of her pen on the table. "There don't have to be an infinite number of junctions if the junctions can handle a wider array of wavelengths."

"There's a lot of energy loss if the junction isn't optimized for the incoming wavelength."

"Yeah," Alina cricked her neck. "I'm working on something that gets closer to the full spectrum."

Ana shrugged then pointed to a workstation a few yards away. "I'll be over there working on a solvable problem."

The rest of the week was punctuated with Davna periodically dropping lists of materials on Alina's table, and with small, controlled explosions from where Alexei and Eva were huddled. Alina and the rest of the group had jumped the first time something exploded, but Sergei had looked at her and just rolled her eyes. "You can take the twins out of bomb squad ... " 

"But you can't take the bomb squad out of the twins?" Alina was glad to hear that someone else had been thinking of them as twins – she had mentally referred to them as such for days even though they clearly weren't.

Sergei shrugged. "I was going to say  _but they'll keep blowing things up even when they leave_ , but yeah, that works, too."  


Harshaw shook his head. "Explosions are so inelegant. Such a waste of energy."

Friday at lunchtime Davna had come over from her workstation, holding a small photovoltaic cell. Alina took it and examined it carefully – the work was beautifully done and when she weighed it in her palm it was significantly lighter than she remembered Solnyshko being. Davna shrugged.

"Your design had a lot of unnecessary bulk. I took it out."

Alina requested a car, and the  _solnyshniki_  along with Harshaw and another person from his division piled in. Ana drove them towards the nearest mountain, and Alina was dismayed to find she drove the way she handled her switchblade, unreasonably confident despite the danger. As Alina grasped the door handle, Sergei gave her a small smile. "Don't worry – she spent three years driving tanks through the mountains before she switched to R&D."  


Alina's knuckles turned white as they took another hard turn. "How do you even drive a tank in the mountains?" she asked through gritted teeth.

Sergei didn't answer, just widened his smile.

After an hour they came to a hard stop in a clearing. Alina stumbled out of the car, pulling the hood of her coat close over her ears. The air at the top of the mountain was clearer and colder for it; it had a bite that even her half-frozen fingers could feel. It took about twenty minutes for Davna, Harshaw, and his assistant to hook up Solnyshko to the battery they'd brought. Sergei carefully adjusted the angle to be slightly wide of perpendicular to the sun's rays. Over the course of the next hour, the sun would pass through a straight ninety-degree angle to the cell, and then spend about half an hour on the other side.

They all piled back into the car and turned on the heat. Sergei and Harshaw flicked through their phones while the twins huddled, heads together, and Ana tapped her switchblade on the gearshift. Alina stared out the window towards the cell and her heart stirred.

She had vague memories of sitting in a living room, watching a small panel in her backyard. In the memory a voice – her father? her mother? – spoke in the next room as she stared and stared at the cell, willing it to absorb the sun, waiting to go see how much warmer the water was than when she started –

The memory ended abruptly. It had been too long and Alina had tried to forget too much. Her stomach sunk in the way it always did when she thought back on her time with her parents and she pushed it out of her mind, back to a place where she couldn't dwell on it. Her watch said it had been nearly an hour. "Let's go."

They jumped out of the car and collected the cell. Harshaw held the battery in his hand, connected it to a laptop he'd brought, tapping at the keys with gloved fingers. After a few moments, he flipped the screen so Alina could see it, and smiled.

It worked. Their first version of Solnyshko had worked. Alina wondered if this was how parents felt watching their child do something exceptional for the first time – she figured that eking even this small amount energy out of Ravka's winter sun should count as extraordinary.

"Great job, Davna. We have something that works." She clapped her hands together. "Now let's go make it twice as good."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! David's a woman here because I'm tired of the socially awkward male engineer trope and _ladies can be socially awkward engineers,_ too. Thanks for reading! ~*~


	8. Chapter 8

The sun was setting over the mountains to the west of Os Alta, the rays glinting off the workstations nearest the lab's windows. Alina had a script running on her computer trying an equation with 1.8 trillion billion combinations of variables – approximating infinity means moving lots of bits. She gave herself a break as the program spit the interesting results onto her screen, and she spent the time watching Davna weld an impossibly small wire onto a thin layer of silicon.

Watching Davna work had become an indulgence of Alina's. The way she found the pieces of material that would fit against one another just right, the way she touched and discarded and moved and adjusted by instinct – if she'd been in the lab with Alina and Nikolai back in America, they would have gotten a lot more done. Watching her was also easy since she became absorbed in the task at hand and wouldn't look up from her table for hours at a time.

Beside her, Marie and Sergei huddled over a table filled with diagrams. Earlier in the week, when Sergei had suggested that he try to understand better what Marie had been working on, Alina had raised her eyebrows. 

"This suggestion wouldn't have anything to do with the way you two have been staring at each other for the last few days, would it?" It had been almost obscene watching the two of them ogle each other. Subtlety was apparently not a particularly Ravkan trait.

Sergei had had the good grace to blush, but he'd pressed on. "There isn't going to be a way to get atoms in the path of every photon without making the cell really thick – thick enough to be prohibitive."

Alina hoped her mild tone hid her irritation. "Yes, that's the problem you're trying to solve."

"It's the wrong problem." At that Alina had let her annoyance show and he'd backtracked slightly. "I  _think_ there's an easier way to do it. Rather than making sure the atoms are in the way of the photons, we should make sure the photons are aimed at the atoms."  


"You want to aim individual photons."

"Not the individuals. Think of it like a river – you don't aim specific molecules but you can change the direction, the flow."

"Water molecules are interchangeable in a way that photons aren't."

"It's an analogy." He'd struggled for words, then settled with holding out his hands. "Give me three days. We'll have something to show then."

She'd reluctantly agreed and the speed with which Marie had abandoned her work and joined his made Alina think that it might not have been completely his idea. The two of them had been inseparable ever since.

The night before when Alina had wandered through the lab on her way back from giving the general an update, she'd stopped to examine the papers scattered across Sergei's workstation. The implementation was still rough, but Alina had recognized the beginnings of a good idea. The beginnings of a  _great_ idea, if she let herself hope.  


She needed all the hope she could get. There was another small explosion from where Eva and Alexei sat, and Ana slammed her switchblade into the wood of her chair in frustration. Alina turned back to her computer and saw the program had finished running. She stretched her neck and began combing through the results.

* * *

The hallway was silent when Alina exited her Ravkan lesson the next day, and it took her a moment to realize why the silence startled her. 

The general wasn't there. 

She'd spent a couple hours each night that week going over the minutiae of Solnyshko with the general. He was intensely interested in every detail of how it worked; the better, he said, to anticipate difficulties she may encounter. He'd clearly spent quite a while learning the basics – and the intermediates – of photovoltaic cells. His questions had been thoughtful and she hadn't minded the view of him was bent over papers with his brow lightly furrowed one bit. But her days were long and she was tired, so the thought of him missing tonight's session didn't disappoint her too much.

She was startled from her thoughts by her phone buzzing, a text from a Ravkan number.

" _Wait_."

She sighed, then saved the number in her phone, feeling slightly ridiculous entering  _General_ as the first name. She tapped the phone lightly against her palm, debating.  _There are worse things than having a few minutes to myself_.  She could use a little downtime to relax, let her heart rate come down from the peak caused by an hour of repeating gibberish next to a blazing fire. So she sat in the hallway, back against the wall, and waited.  


In the end, she had plenty of time to herself – enough time to enjoy the solitude and then resent it. It was a full hour before she heard footsteps in the corridor and looked up to see the general's silhouette. She stood, eyes narrowed, her heart racing, now, from anger. "This is  _not_ a good use of my time."  


He stopped in front of her, head slightly cocked. "My other responsibilities were pressing."

"No," she said, infuriated by his calm. "All of this. The lessons. The daily updates.  _Waiting_. You brought me here to build solar power – why are you wasting my time on other things?"   


"I hardly think learning Ravkan is a waste of your time."

"These lessons are! This teacher has the most bizarre instruction methods I have ever seen! Has she successfully taught anyone anything  _ever_?"  


"Yes." 

Alina snorted. "What, she teaches an advanced class on how to make other people uncomfortable?"

The general crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. "She taught me Fjerdan."

Alina opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Out of all the questions she had, she cringed when the one that popped out of her mouth was: "You speak Fjerdan?"

"Flawlessly." He quirked an eyebrow. "And as for the updates being a waste of time, I'm under the impression that the time I've saved you in requisitions and dealing with all levels of administration has more than compensated you for our evening discussions."

She couldn't disagree, but her anger wasn't ready to dissipate. "And the wait just now?"

"The price we pay for being at war." He brushed an imaginary piece of lint from the cuff of his suit. "I, too, would have preferred not to have been interrupted with this particular matter."

She met his gaze, annoyed that he wasn't annoyed, irritated at herself. She felt ridiculous. She strode off down the hallway and he fell into step beside her. They walked in silence for a moment.

"I don't even know what to call you," she blurted. She looked ahead and was relieved when her peripheral vision showed that he didn't glance her way.

"I'm fairly certain you do."

" _Da, Dzhenral._ " Alina's last foster parents had told her she'd mastered the verbal eye roll and it was in full effect here. "It's so ... formal."  


"You may call me  _Kommander_ , if you prefer."  


Her physical eye roll made an appearance. "Do you have a first name?"

"Of course."

"What is it?"

"If I wanted you to know I would have told you." They had reached the point in the underground tunnel where they could turn either towards Alina's barracks or towards the general's office. He positioned himself to face her. "I won't take any more of your time this evening, Alina." 

He walked off and she opened her mouth to call something after him. She hesitated for a moment, thinking better of it, and before she said anything he disappeared around the corner.

* * *

The soft chime of laughter floated through the air, working its way across the ballroom towards where Alina stood with Genya and Ivan. The president and the general were speaking in an adjoining room, so Ivan, bored, had made his way over to the two women.

Alina had spent the day reading her library books before she headed to Genya’s room to get ready for the event. She’d finished  _Ravkan Geopolitics_ that morning and had sat, kicking the floor, staring out her window for some time. She finally grew too uncomfortable with her own thoughts, so she picked up  _Ravkan Religion and Regions: the Intersection of Geography and Faith_ and began to read, hoping to distract herself from the heat that had been building in her stomach. But the book had been dry, kindling for the fire.  


Now she stood towards the edge of the dance floor, holding a glass in her left hand, stroking with her right thumb the scar that Genya had once again cleverly disguised. She looked around the room, disquieted; beneath the dancing and the president’s laugh, beneath the shouts of the drunken  _divizioniki_ and the golden angels perched atop columns, she was beginning to see the forced joviality of these events. There was a war being fought close by – Google Translate had helped her read about an ambush this morning just a few hundred miles from the palace in which she now stood. The feeling in her stomach from earlier hadn't dissipated; she took a sip of champagne and felt the alcohol mingle with the acid in the back of her throat. She grimaced.  


"He's not as tough as he looks." Genya interrupted Alina’s thoughts with a light hand on her forearm. She must have seen Alina’s confusion, because she continued, half-smiling. "If it’s Ivan that’s making you look like that."

Alina shook her head and smiled. "No, just thinking."

"We can fix that." Genya picked up another flute of champagne from a passing server and handed it to Alina, who was forced to take it in her empty hand and eyed it warily.

"I'm not sure that alcohol is the solution to everything," Alina countered. 

Genya took both glasses of champagne from her and sighed. "No," she acknowledged, "not everything."

The orchestra in the corner began a waltz and Harshaw appeared next to Alina. He extended a hand. "May I?"

Alina glanced over and saw that Genya was already talking to Ivan. Though his eyes never stopped scanning the crowd, his face was tense with attention to whatever she was saying. Alina smiled at Harshaw and let him lead her to the dance floor.

He was nearly as good a dancer as Genya, but she was still fighting the urge to look at her feet when he smiled. "You're doing fine."

She exhaled. "I look that nervous?"

He shrugged and shook his head lightly, a lock of hair falling loose across his forehead. Alina glanced at the room beyond his shoulder. There were people sitting around the walls and standing near the bar, but it seemed that nearly everyone was dancing. Like the week before, this was a formal affair and everyone was dressed well, and she noticed that, once again, many of the older women wore hats or scarves over part of their hair. She blinked when she realized she'd just mentally assigned  _older_ to anyone who looked over thirty. Something had been bothering her, and she hadn't been able to put a name to it until now. "Everyone here is so young."   


Harshaw laughed. "I'm sure  _Ledi_ Vakhrov would be pleased to hear you say that."  


"No, I don't mean  _here_ ," Alina corrected. "Well, here, too, but in the lab. I don't think I saw more than a handful of people who looked like they would be anything more than in their late twenties." Even in her lab at the university the average age had been far older than it was in her lab here. How had she not realized this before? Alina drew her eyes off the crowd. "How is that?"  


"The wars have not been kind to Ravka." He let a few bars of music pass before glancing at her and seeing that she wasn't satisfied with that answer. He sighed. "The last few months of the civil war were particularly brutal. The military had new weapons that it deployed on the rebels. The weapons were awful, and the rebels were furious. They invaded universities, research centers, places that were not defended and not prepared."

She'd asked the question, but found herself automatically shutting out the implications of what he was saying, protecting herself from potential pain. She needed to stop doing that. Alina forced herself to breathe and said what Harshaw hadn't yet. "They were all killed."

"Executed, really." He forced a crooked smile. "We're the oldest cohort in research and development, now. Ironically enough, being drafted into the infantry instead of attending university was what allowed us to survive."

"You didn't attend university?" This surprised Alina – she assumed her coworkers had studied after their mandatory service before returning to the military.

"Very few of us. We're mostly self-taught, but the rebels burned textbooks, too – the lab functions in English because those are the references we had. I'm not sure anyone in our division would even know the Ravkan word for  _photovoltaic._ "  


They danced in silence while she thought. "Do you think  _Energiya Proteksiya_ will be able to provide the villages with power?"  


"I hope so," he said, the pained look in his eyes giving way to a dark humor. "If not, I have a feeling we'll die trying."

* * *

A couple hours later, Alina was shrugging on her coat, getting ready to leave the president's palace and return to her barracks. She'd said taken her leave of everyone she needed to acknowledge, as she fastened the buttons she saw a flash of Genya's red hair in a corner of the room.

Ivan was there, standing to the side, eyes narrowed as two  _divizioniki_ pat Genya down – she remembered how Ivan had checked her for weapons in their first meeting at the zoo, and this seemed to be a similarly thorough though markedly less professional job. Alina caught a glimpse of Genya's profile as the woman turned to snap at one of the  _divizioniki;_ the officer laughed in response.  


Alina frowned and made to walk towards her friend, but before she took a step Genya had disappeared through a door. Ivan headed in the opposite direction, and Alina didn't follow either of them.

* * *

Alina had put on pajamas and was brushing her teeth when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Nikolai.

_How would you solve this?_

She opened up the attached image. It was a photo of a problem related to the interaction of materials when setting up a circuit on a grid connected to a battery. There were a few sentences of description and a diagram – a complex but solvable scenario. Alina sighed and clenched the toothbrush between her teeth as she typed out a response.

_Are you trying to get me to do your midterm for you over text?_

The phone buzzed again a moment later.  _Well I can't call, professor's in the room_.  


She rolled her eyes.  _Do your own work, Lantsov._

It was nearly five minutes before she got a reply.  _I miss having you as a study partner._

She hesitated, unsure how to respond.  In the end, she didn't have long to worry because another text with an image came through soon after.  _Okay then, how would you solve this one?_

* * *

The snow fell gently, as it had almost every day in the nearly three-and-a-half weeks since Alina had arrived in Ravka. She had gotten into the habit of getting coffee from the common area upstairs and coming back to her room to watch the sun rise. The window in her room faced east, so she could sit at her vanity and admire the rays of sun catching the flakes as they floated, borne on unseen winds outside her window. 

When she did this, she let her mind wander back through memories of other snowfalls she'd seen. Initially, the memories had been of snow falling outside the lab she'd shared with Nikolai. Then the memories had been the long days of winter break, tucked into bed, pressing against Mal's warm chest as they watched the snowfall from the safe underside of a thick down comforter. Then even older memories of chasing Mal around the lawn in elementary school, throwing snowballs at him with astounding accuracy. She'd had an intuitive grasp of physics even then.

This last week, though, the memories that came to mind when she watched the snow were from even earlier, when she'd lived with her adoptive parents. She had a memory of being in front of a fireplace, another of staring out a window as a story was read – though what story and by whom she couldn't recall. The memories were flashes, just a few frames that ended as abruptly as they'd come. They were feelings, images that hit her in staccato jolts. When the memories ended, she'd give herself a few minutes to compose herself before heading into work for the day.

This was all part of the routine she settled into. Some mornings she would run in the gym before sunrise and after work she would have her lessons, update the general, and work some more before bed. She met Genya for breakfast three times a week and spent one out of every few evenings with her watching a movie, being a fit model for the new uniforms, or getting caught up on the latest gossip. The gossip involved lots of people Alina didn't know, but Genya didn't seem to require much of a response and Alina enjoyed listening to her talk. Friday afternoons her group at work did a field test of the latest version of Solnyshko. She was adjusting to the mandatory fun of the president's palace on Saturday nights, and she spent the rest of the weekend reading books on Ravka and doing problem sets for her classes. 

This was her life now, and she began to feel like less of an observer and more of a participant. She became accustomed to Zoya's barbs and started to parry them with practiced ease. She managed her group of five with the affection of a parent and the political edge she was learning from the general. The  _we_ in her mind was slowly shifting to encompass Ravkans; if there was a chance she could give this country electricity, she'd do everything she could to make it happen.  


This was her life now. She found she didn't miss her old one.

* * *

"You said you had something to show me?" Alina peered over Eva's shoulder as she pounded furiously at the keyboard. It wasn't clear what, exactly, the program she was writing would do, but Alexei was hopping from foot to foot in excitement.

"We got preliminary results!" he grinned.

"And?" Alina prompted.

"They're good!"

"They're great," Eva corrected, not pausing in her typing.

"Great," Alexei agreed.

"Preliminary results on what?" Eva and Alexei had been mostly huddled together in their corner for a week, barely speaking to anyone else. They were, allegedly, working on figuring out how to make the panels track the sun, thus enabling the cells to capture the maximum amount of energy, but Alina hadn't seen anything yet.

"Our idea for moving the panels. Eva, show her."

Eva and Alexei walked Alina through a series diagrams they pulled up onto the screen. The idea was brilliant in its simplicity; it took the reason that the cells needed to be turned in the first place – the movement of the sun's rays over the course of the day – and used that movement as a tool to rotate the panels themselves. They had come up with an idea for a material that would expand or contract depending on the frequencies of the rays hitting it. By having the material expand slowly when exposed to certain frequencies, a hollow half tube with a wide diameter could produce the sort of gradual rotation that the panel would need to always be perpendicular to the sun. Nighttime would give the tube time to contract before starting over again.

Alina loved the idea. When they ran the script to show her the results, she was transfixed.

She watched as a series of numbers appeared on the screen. It showed simulations of the photons from ten thousand different days and how close to perpendicular the material would, in theory, be able to keep the panel. Eva entered a few more commands and a graph popped up, showing a histogram of how much time the cell spent each fraction of a degree off of the ideal positioning. The graph looked pretty good – most of the time was spent relatively close to right on perpendicular – but there was a long tail to one side where the material hadn't expanded fast enough in the beginning and end of the day when the sun was weaker.

"These results are great." Alina rubbed her ear with her thumb, thinking. "But they can be better. Here, try this."

Eva made a few tweaks based on Alina's suggestions and reran the script. The histogram shifted slightly. 

After a couple hours of experimenting with new ideas, the distribution was beginning to approach normal so they switched to trying things to make the variance smaller. Just as Alexei had another idea, Eva glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen. "It’s time for your lesson,  _Sardzhent_."  


Alina looked at the time.  _Shit_. She knew she should go, but she couldn’t leave in the middle of this. "Give me one second," she muttered, pulling out her phone. She scrolled until she found the general’s laconic "wait" text from before, and wrote him one back:  


_In the middle of something. I’ll meet you at your office at the usual time._

She locked the phone and put it on the table beside her. "Okay," she said. "Let’s do this."

Alexei raised his eyebrows at Eva, but entered the commands and hit return. Alina crouched close over their shoulders, and they watched as ten thousand simulations run, generating new graphs, each one a little better than the last.

The shape of the graphs was trying to tell her something. She thought for a moment, rubbing a hand over her eyes. Where had she seen a pattern like that before? She'd solved a problem like this one, she was sure of it. She just needed to think.

Suddenly, her thinking was interrupted by silence – the voices and clinks of glass and metal that always punctuated the background of the lab had suddenly ceased. She heard the click of shoes approaching.  _No no. No._

She moved her hand from her forehead to cover her eyes, a childish  _if I can't see you you can't see me_ , and willed the sound of the footsteps to pass her by. It was more than one person. Two? More?  


The sound stopped stopped directly in front of her. She separated her fingers and glanced out between them. 

The general stood, mouth in a straight line, flanked by Ivan and another man only somewhat smaller who she recognized as typically standing outside the general’s office.

" _Sardzhent_ Starkov."  


She pulled herself to standing and lowered her hand when the general addressed her, and her peripheral vision let her know that everyone was looking at her. The silence of the lab was awful. 

She focused straight ahead and nodded. " _Dzhenral_ Morozova."  


"You’re supposed to be at your Ravkan lesson now."

"I was in the middle of something that I thought was important to finish." He looked at her expectantly. " _Dzhenral_ ," she added.  


"The relative importance of tasks is not your decision to make." She opened her mouth to explain and he continued, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Get your things and I will escort you."

Alina’s whole face was flushed as she put her computer and phone into her bag a couple tables away. Zoya was leaning back on a workstation, arms folded, clearly enjoying the spectacle.

"I would look less smug if I were you, Nazyalensky." The general’s voice was casual, smooth, but Alina saw the slight shift in muscles that changed Zoya's smirk into a grimace. "Ensuring that your reports are where they’re meant to be should not fall to me."

The silence continued as the general made an overly solicitous arm motion indicating that Alina should lead the way before following with his two men. She waited until they were well clear of the lab to speak, glancing behind her shoulder at the general.

"That was unnecessary."

"Was it."

She couldn’t see his face but his voice carried a calm lack of amusement. It irritated her.

"You could have replied to my text asking me to go like a normal person instead of showing up and embarrassing me in front of the entire lab. And you definitely didn't need to bring Ivan and, and –"

"Fedyor."

"And Fedyor! Were you thinking you might have to drag me out of the lab?"

"What I was thinking, Alina," his voice casually clipped, "was that I’d like never to have to do this again. I hope I've made my point sufficiently well."

" _Da_ ,  _Dzhenral_ ," she mumbled, flushing.  


"I anticipate being able to count on you being where you ought to be going forward." He stopped at the stairwell that led up to her lesson, opened the door and gestured her through. "I’ll see you in an hour."

* * *

"You're not eating, you're just playing with your food."

Genya was, of course, right. Alina sighed and set down her fork. Over the last few minutes, she'd been systematically mashing the fish on her plate until it was nearly a paste.  _Herring pulp_. She could not name a single more repulsive-sounding food. She pushed her plate away.   


Genya widened her eyes and put down her own fork. "What's going on?"

The truth was, Alina wasn't sure. It had been nearly five weeks since she landed in Ravka, and things were, for the most part, going well. Solnyshko's progress was good. Other things were good. But Alina wasn't.

She'd finished reading the books that she'd gotten from the library and they didn't sit well with her. The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn more, the more she  _wanted_ more. She wanted to understand what had happened, to really know  _why_. She wanted –  


She rubbed her thumb along the scar. It had taken her until just a few days prior to put the name to the feeling that had been growing inside her, but now that she knew it she couldn't let it go. She couldn't stop picking at the scab. 

Alina took a deep breath. "You've been through a lot." 

Genya raised her eyebrows at the statement but nodded slightly. "We all have." The emphasis was slight, but Alina heard what Genya meant –  _we_ was the two of them and Ravka, both.   


"Do you ever," Alina continued, staring hard at her plate and fighting the urge to pick up her fork and finish what she started with the fish. "Do you ... consider ..." Now that she was saying it aloud, it sounded ridiculous.

Genya reached across the table and took Alina's hand, placing her own thumb over Alina's scar to keep her from rubbing it. "Consider what?"

Genya was too nice. Alina didn't deserve nice. Not with what she was about to say. 

She kept her eyes down, her voice barely a whisper. "Revenge."

Several seconds passed in which Alina felt shame begin to gnaw at her insides. She was being ridiculous. This whole thing was a mistake. She went to pull her hand away from Genya's but then felt a light squeeze. She looked up. The other woman's mouth was set – firm, but understanding. "Of course, Alina. I'm human." She sighed. " _You're_ human. Wanting revenge is natural."  


"But?"

"But," Genya acknowledged, squeezing Alina's hand again, "it won't bring your parents back."

Alina knew that, of course, but hearing someone else give voice to that thought was a near physical pain. She turned her head away, hiding the beginning of tears. Genya sighed, then reached across the table to grab Alina's other hand.

"Sometimes the thing to do is just carry on." She brushed a lock of hair behind Alina's ear. "Sometimes living well is the best revenge."

* * *

_"You're awake."_  
_"I am now."_ An exhale, groan. _"Don't you ever sleep, Dzhenral?"_  
_"I got your message."_  
_"Did it say 'please wake me up to talk about this?'"_ Silence. A sigh.  _"I'm worried about her."_  
_"Wanting revenge is concerning to you?"_  
_"It's off-script. It doesn't fit with what we need right now. What_ she _needs right now. I'm ... worried."_  
_"I'm glad you told me."_  
_"Are you? I'm not sure I am. And not just because you called me at three in the morning."_  
_"You did the right thing."_  
A beat. _"The right thing for whom?"_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's about to get real. Finally! Let me know what you think ~*~


	9. Chapter 9

Alina's neckline defied gravity.

Alina had many weaknesses but physics was not one of them; not understanding why her clothing hadn't revealed her entire chest by now bothered her. When she'd put on the trial version of a new dress uniform Genya had prepared, she had been sure that it would fall open before they could even make it out of the room. But, an hour later, her clothing had stayed just as Genya had arranged it, running that fine line between enticement and impropriety.

Alina frowned and tugged at the neckline – again – as she looked around the ballroom. The orchestra's break meant that everyone had either moved towards the bar, huddled around the small standing tables or, for the first time this year, ventured out on the balcony.

Spring in Ravka was more of a relief than Alina had anticipated, and given that she'd only arrived in February she couldn't blame everyone else for heading outside every chance they got. Her morning runs around Os Alta had seen the streets packed with pedestrians enjoying the outdoors for the first time in months – everything from men resolutely wearing shorts to children lobbing the wet remnants of snow at each other. 

A hand grabbed her own. Genya, eyebrows raised, gently pried Alina's fingers off her uniform. "It will be fine if you leave it alone."

"Easy for you to say," Alina grumbled, moving instead to rub her thumb over her concealed scar.

"Given that I designed the outfit, my opinion here is one you can trust."

Zoya was walking across the room and got stuck behind a group in front of them. The lieutenant cast them a glance, shook her head. "A little nice weather and everyone's losing their minds." Alina wasn't sure if Zoya was talking about them or to them, and in either case what exactly made Zoya think that minds were being lost.

Genya smiled. "You look lovely tonight, Zoya." 

The lieutenant's eyes narrowed, waiting, and Genya just kept smiling. When Zoya stalked off a few moments later, Alina raised her eyebrows at Genya, who shrugged. "Sometimes it's best to just be charming."

The music started up again. After only a few moments:

"Alina." 

She silently congratulated herself for not startling when he spoke. Tonight, for whatever reason, the general had decided that he'd rather spend the evening dancing than surrounded by a crowd of people fighting for his attention. He'd danced with many of the majors and lieutenants present, and she figured he might make his way down to her eventually. She'd hoped, anyway. 

As they positioned themselves to dance, Alina realized that this provided him a clear view down the front of her dress, and though he didn't seem to be taking the opportunity to look she made a mental note to refuse to wear anything Genya designed ever again. They danced in silence and he moved them towards the open balcony.

"There will be a demonstration of the prototype of  _solnyshko_  this fall."   


Now Alina startled. "I hadn't heard of this."

"I'm telling you now." A few more steps. "There will be an event in the  _divizioniki_  camp. There's generally a celebration," the word carried a lot of distaste for a man who was currently  _at_  a celebration, "there in late September. We'll have  _solnyshko_  meeting the electricity needs there during the day and through the night for a demonstration."  


Alina bit the inside of her cheek. "If I'm correctly remembering where that camp is, that's not a great location." It was slightly outside of Os Alta, somewhat removed from the sorts of mountains that Solnyshko was designed to use to its advantage.

"It doesn't have to be great. It just has to be good enough." He nodded to where Zoya was standing, arms crossed, glaring at the two of them.  _She's jealous_ , Alina realized, and stifled a laugh. "Nazyalensky will help you figure out what's needed."  


"And what do I get out of it?"

"Job security." She snorted and he lifted a corner of his lips. "In addition to showcasing its potential for the country and perhaps getting you more cooperation from villages for the initial installation, it will show the president that his trust in us hasn't been misplaced."  _Us_. Alina's heart did a weird double beat at the idea of there being an  _us_ , and she immediately tried to cover with a grimace. The general misinterpreted the look. "This is politics; done the right way, everyone can get what they want. The president. You." He paused for a moment, his eyes flicking over the exposed skin between her neck and her shoulder. "Me."  


Alina wasn't sure if she imagined the innuendo in that statement, so she rolled her eyes to take his attention away from the blush she felt starting in her chest. "Don't forget about Ravka."

Now he lifted both sides of his lips. "I never forget about Ravka."

* * *

"How's it going with infinity?"

Alina glanced up and tried to feign annoyance at being interrupted, though she had just been staring at her screen for several minutes now. The switchblade Ana was flipping between her fingers was uncomfortably close to Alina's face, so Alina leaned back in her chair to put a little more distance between them. Just in case.

"Better than I expected and not as well as I'd hoped. Do you have something to discuss?"

"Magnet currents."

"Magnet currents?"

Ana nodded. "Let me show you."

They moved to Ana's workstation where there was an elaborate setup of magnets clustered together with open spaces between them, a bunch of them covered with duct tape. Alina was pretty sure that the setup hadn't been there when they'd come in in the morning.

"The incoming photons are knocking electrons off of the atoms, but a lot of them are recombining with atoms before they make it to the edge of the semiconductor where they can be converted into electricity. The whole reason that electrons are recombining with atoms before they get there is that they're attracted to an opposite charge. So all we need to do is create something that has an  _even stronger_  charge, one that attracts the electrons more aggressively."  


Alina nodded slowly. The magnets in front of her were beginning to make sense.

The idea, as Ana explained it, really was well-summarized by the phrase "magnet currents." It involved using charges strong enough to draw all the electrons to the edge in a small number of paths. The fact that the electrons would be clustering together – the charge would be strong enough that their natural repellant forces wouldn't be able to compete – meant that fewer of them would be lost to recombination with atoms. Ana ended the explanation by lifting the tape from some of the magnets, and they were quickly drawn together and towards one edge of the table, just as described.

The theory was great. But. "How will we actually  _build_  this?"  


"Davna will figure it out." Ana shrugged and Alina raised her eyebrows.

"That's a lot of confidence for something this complicated."

" _You_ think she can do it," Ana pointed out and Alina didn't disagree. "You have a lot of confidence in us for someone who just met us a couple months ago."  


"Should I not?"

Ana shrugged again, and grinned broadly. "Why are you asking me? I just used to drive tanks."

"What did you do after that?"

Ana had already exited the conversation, flipping her switchblade quickly over her fingers. "Whatever I wanted," she answered vaguely before wandering off in search of Davna.

* * *

The heat from the fire was close to unbearable. Winter had given way to spring and Alina had hoped that the fire in her teacher's room might be lessened accordingly. Alina had hoped for any number of possible outcomes for her Ravkan lessons, though, but they never seemed to materialize, and this one was no different. Alina stumbling repeating the words for the hundredth time that lesson as sweat rolled down her spine. Her teacher glared at her. 

_Stop it!_  Alina wanted to scream.  _I'm not learning anything this way!_

The teacher continued on, Alina stumbling behind.

A memory from childhood surfaced in Alina's mind, as they had been with increasing frequency. She must have been five or six – she was tucked into bed in the memory and she recognized the blanket she'd had during those years. She remembered a pressure on the back of her head. She turned to look, and saw the blurred face of her father. 

She'd long since accepted blurred features of her parents in memories as her subconscious protecting her – if she didn't think about her parents too hard, if she didn't picture them too precisely, she could hold it together. She could not think about what happened to them. She gritted her teeth and waited for the memory to end.

But it continued. She turned back to look at the comforter and she heard her father speaking, his voice that had once been as fuzzy and indistinct as his face slowly crystalizing into words. He was reading her a book, and if she turned her head slightly she could even see the pictures. This was a bedtime story.

She let herself sit in the memory for a moment, as her father turned a page revealing a painted scene full of trees. There was a rhyme about a forest that he began and she felt him stroke her hair with one hand. It felt so  _real_ that she looked up and suddenly his whole face was there, all of it, just as she remembered but hadn't  _let_  herself remember since – oh, god, since –  


"Stop it!" Alina slammed her hands on the table and stood. "Stop! Just  _stop_!" Tears streamed down her face. The memory and then the grief had hit her full force, all of a sudden; she could still picture her adoptive father's face, feel his warm palm stroking her hair. Where had these come from? Where –  


Her teacher leaned back in her chair. "Well," the woman said, nodding slowly. "It's about time."

Alina's grief turned into rage. "You speak English!" She couldn't believe it. The teacher just smiled. "You –  _you –_ " Alina's mouth snapped shut. She listened to herself for the first time since she'd stood, and –  


Alina collapsed into her chair, shocked, confused, unable to stop the tears running down her cheeks. " _You_ ," the teacher pointed out, slowly, enunciating, "remember how to speak Ravkan."  


"Yes," Alina replied slowly in the same language, one that she was speaking for the first time in fourteen years. "I ... do."

The rest of the lesson passed quickly, Alina still mostly in shock. Whatever they were reading (Alina would later realize that they had been  _reading the story_  her father had read to her) had shaken that memory loose, brought it close enough to the front of her mind that she couldn't protect herself from it anymore. The memories were suddenly flooding back, the memories of Ravkan with them.  


Her teacher spoke slowly, using the sort of voice and vocabulary you might with a child, which, when it came to Ravkan, Alina was. The teacher's name was Baghra, and Alina cried again when she heard it; her parents had had a friend with that name, a friend that had been forgotten for the last decade and a half. Baghra stood slowly with her cane and left the room, returning with a box of tissues.

Only a few minutes after Alina had stopped crying, Baghra nodded towards the door. "Now," she said, still slowly, still carefully, "go tell that boy to stop standing in the hall and come in already."

So she did know. Alina had wondered, but the surprise of her knowing, let alone calling the general a boy, hardly registered on her shock scale this evening. She walked down the short hallway and opened the door.

The general leaned against the far wall, reading his manilla folders. He glanced up when she opened the door, eyebrows raised at the sight of her tear-stained face.

Alina licked her lips and spoke in English. "She – Baghra, that is – says that you can come in."

The general began to smile – cautiously, like a wolf approaching prey. "Tell her," he replied, slowly and in Ravkan, "that I'm fine out here."

Alina, still dazed, nodded and turned back to let her teacher know. Baghra had apparently already heard and shouted out a string of words that were unfamiliar to Alina, though she got the point.

The general let out a low laugh and motioned for her to come into the hallway and shut the door behind her. Now he smiled broadly, a full, hungry smile; perhaps it was her own face contorted with emotions that she'd worked so hard to hide from that had prompted him to show his own. "Welcome to being a real Ravkan, Alina," he said in the same slow Ravkan her teacher had used. "We're glad to have you here."

* * *

Understanding Ravkan opened up a whole new world for Alina. She was suddenly able to understand the snippits of chatter that she passed by in the halls, and Zoya made noticeably fewer comments under her breath which Alina took to mean she'd been interpreting their meaning correctly. Though Alina still spoke in English, a few people at the lab switched to speaking to her about non-work things in Ravkan, and she hadn't heard Ivan speak a word of English since.

Alina's accent was still atrocious, however, and even though she understood more of what was being said, she had the vocabulary of an eight year old. Her lessons with Baghra switched from repeating nonsense to learning new words and actually producing sentences. It was a struggle, but she could feel herself doing a little better each time.

Speaking Ravkan well was going to be a lot of work. For the first time, she found herself excited by the prospect.

* * *

Genya had finished concealing the scar on Alina's hand and was now busy pinning up her own hair in the mirror. Alina, already dressed, wandered around the other woman's sparsely decorated room. After her third pass around, Alina idly picked up one of the long golden hairpins Genya had set in front of the mirror. She admired the pearl set into the gold, but as she turned it in her fingers she dropped the pin, gasping. Genya whirled around. "Be careful!"

The cut was deep and clean, the pain almost shockingly clear. Alina pressed down hard on the wound to staunch the blood already spilling out from the pad of her thumb. Genya rummaged through her drawers and produced a handkerchief that she pressed onto the cut. She held it, not looking at her friend, lips taught.

"What the hell kind of hairpins are those?" Alina gasped.

"Sharp ones," Genya muttered, checking the bleeding underneath the cloth. A couple minutes later, satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, Genya placed a bandaid tightly on Alina's finger before picking up another pin and resuming arranging her hair.

Alina stared, openmouthed.  _That's it?_  "Where do you even get such sharp pins?"  


Genya held a pin between her teeth, lips deliberately peeled away, while she tugged on her hair. She took the pin and shoved it firmly into place. "I made them."

"You made them? Why?"

Genya held another lock of hair against her head and pinned it. She repeated the process a few more times before looking at Alina in the mirror. When she finally spoke, there was an edge to her voice that Alina was almost equally afraid of cutting herself on.

"You can be beautiful," Genya said, slowly, deliberately, "and a soldier at the same time." 

Genya finished dressing in silence. As they walked down the hallway together, the other woman grabbed Alina's hand and squeezed.

* * *

_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well is the best revenge._

Alina repeated Genya's advice to herself like a mantra, trying to will herself to believe it.

* * *

Alina tapped her pencil on the desk, oddly on edge. She wasn't sure why the Ravkan military had a desk just like the ones she'd had all throughout her years of schooling, but it felt weirdly uncomfortable to sit at one again. The desk felt almost too small, as if she'd grown.

Ivan stood behind a heavier desk examining the blue booklet like he'd never seen one before – which, Alina supposed, he hadn't. He crossed the room and put it on her desk with obvious distaste. He walked back to the front of the room and lifted a sheet of paper.

"You will have," he read the English aloud slowly, a grimace plastered firmly onto his face, "three hours to complete the exam."

Alina had been pleased that the general had made arrangements for her final exam without her having to remind him. Since she had only been enrolled in two classes, Sundays had been sufficient for her to turn in problem sets and keep up with the work. One of her professors was letting her turn Solnyshko for her final project, and it had only taken her an afternoon to get it ready for submission. For her final exam, her university had stressed the importance of having the same setup as the other students, with a desk, pencil, and a proctor who could observe her to make sure she wasn't cheating.

As if Alina needed to cheat.

Initially she'd hoped that Genya would be the proctor, but as he read the instructions aloud Alina was glad that she wasn't missing this opportunity to observe Ivan playing the role of professor.

"If you have questions about the wording of the problems," he continued, "you may ..." He scanned the rest of the page then looked at her pointedly and switched to Ravkan. "I will not answer questions."

"I think that will be fine, Ivan." She smiled at him and he grunted, handing her the question booklet. 

"Please start."

Alina opened the booklet and began the last final exam of her life.

* * *

The general was on the phone when she came out of her Ravkan lesson, and he motioned for her to follow him. He primarily listened to whoever was on the other end, occasionally punctuating the silence with a short and vague question in Ravkan or a sound of acknowledgement. His end of the conversation gave away nothing; Alina guessed he could be doing anything from confirming details of an ambush to checking if his dry cleaning was ready for pickup. Though she supposed he probably didn't call about his own dry cleaning.

Once the general had felt he understood Solnyshko sufficiently well, they'd stopped going to his office most evenings. They'd generally discuss whatever updates she had on the walk to her to barracks, and his car met him in the underground parking garage there. Though the weather was mild enough that they could have walked on the surface streets, they stuck to the tunnels, which they had mostly to themselves.

The general slipped his phone into his pocket. "Who was that?" she asked.

He looked at her and waved one hand in such a way to indicate that he wasn't interested in answering the question, that she was impertinent for asking, and that it hadn't been anything of consequence anyway. 

"It must have been important to have kept you from your manilla folders,  _Dzhenral._ " She'd learned that if she addressed him properly at the end of a sentence, he was less likely to ignore the sentence in favor of waiting for her to reference his title. She was getting plenty good at politics.  


He didn't answer, so she pressed the point. "Why do you carry around manilla folders? Computers are a much more compact way to access files. I can show you how to use one if you like.  _Dzhenral_ ," she added quickly.  


He rolled his neck. "Most people speak more respectfully to a man who signs their paychecks and keeps their family safe."

"I don't have a family," Alina pointed out.

"Mmm."

"Besides, it's probably less the paychecks and more that everyone else is either too scared of you or enjoys looking at you too much."

The muscles on his face shifted, but he kept his gaze ahead. "Do you."

"Do I what?"

"Enjoy looking at me." He appeared to be smiling now.

She rolled her eyes and was glad it was dark enough in the tunnel to hide a blush. She'd said more than she'd meant to – maybe she wasn't quite the politics expert yet. Once she conceded that to herself, she felt that resorting to name calling wasn't out of line. "You're can be a jerk sometimes, you know that? A beautiful man, but a total jer–"

She wasn't sure if it was to prove her point or demonstrate otherwise when the next moment he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. For a second she had thought he was going to hit her, but when she looked in his eyes she saw something completely different. There was anger there, a little, but it seemed to be directed towards an internal fight – mostly, she saw desire. They stood close enough that she could feel the shaky exhalations of his breath on her skin, see the webbing of paper-thin scars across his face. The pressure of his hands on her shoulders increased.  _He's going to kiss me_ , she realized.  


But then, just as suddenly, he released her and took a step back, his expression empty of both the struggle and smile she thought she'd seen earlier, returned to its carefully neutral mask. After a few seconds he nodded his head at her. "Good evening, Alina."

He turned and walked towards the garage, disappearing from view. She heard a car door close, an idling engine roar to life, and then he was gone.

* * *

Alina wandered back from the cafeteria after breakfast that Saturday, enjoying the sunshine and letting her mind run wild.

Why had the general done that? She was pretty sure he'd meant to kiss her, and then stopped himself. Would he do it again? Did she  _want_  him to?   


She sighed. These were exactly the same questions she'd been asking herself since it had happened two days earlier and she was no closer to having the answers. She was and had been fairly certain that if he kissed her she would reciprocate, but a large part of her brain insisted that getting involved with the general any more than she already was was a terrible idea. Over breakfast the previous day Genya had mentioned that the general had been called to the northern border – something about a skirmish that Alina knew she should care about but could barely hear over her mind screaming  _He's not here today!_ Maybe that was a good thing, she decided. Give herself some time and distance.  


Her phone buzzed and she welcomed the distraction. There was a text from Nikolai.

_Pic from where you are?_

Alina took a photo of a tree in full bloom in front of the library and texted it in response. This was a game she'd played with Nikolai plenty over the years – it was generally his way of saying he was somewhere more exciting. Even though she knew what was coming, she'd always send him a photo and wait to see what she got in reply. He'd sent several photos of himself with celebrities, and in one he'd been about to jump out of a plane. Once Alina had received a photo of him with the president. ( _Ask him why big oil is still running congress_ , she'd texted back. He hadn't.)   


He was slow to reply, and Alina wondered if the Ravkan wireless network was not as robust as she'd assumed. When the picture came through, she stopped. And looked up.

Waving madly from across the street was none other than Nikolai Lantsov. He ran across the street, eliciting several horn blasts as Alina cringed, and wrapped her in a huge embrace. After a few stunned seconds, she hugged him back.

"What are you  _doing_  here?"  


Nikolai released her and turned to the very out of breath Ravkan who had just run across the street after him. "That's what I told you she'd say, isn't it?"

The man bent over, put his hands on his knees. "You can't," a few shallow breaths, "cross streets," pant, "like that," pant pant, "in Ravka."

"Of course. It won't happen again." He smiled and turned back to Alina. 

"Wait," she said, shaking her head in response. "Wait. What  _are you doing_ here?"  


"I'm delivering this." Nikolai reached into his bag ( _Manpurse_ , Alina had said once.  _Fashion tote_ , he'd corrected her) and pulled out a thin rectangular object.  


The fact that it took her so long to recognize what it was was a better signal of how much she'd become accustomed to her new life than anything else that had happened. It was her diploma. She traced her fingers over the embossed seal lightly. 

"You came all the way to Ravka to deliver this?"

Nikolai shrugged and grinned. "Part of my tour. Some people backpack through Europe after graduation, but yachting through war-torn Asia is much more my style. Say, word is that Ravka's involved in a couple of land wars? I hear those are terrible ideas."

"No kidding." Alina was grinning herself now. She was more relieved to see him than she thought she'd be.

"I was surprised at how difficult it was to get a visa to enter the country. You Ravkans play it close to the chest."

_You Ravkans_. "Your mom wasn't able to help you expedite the paperwork?"  


"She might have been," Nikolai conceded, "if she had known I was coming here." Alina raised her eyebrows and Nikolai made a dismissive gesture. "Anyway, it's worked out. I'm here on a day visa and had to agree to stay with my guide at all times. Oh, where are my manners? This," Nikolai gestured to the man next to him, who, now that he had caught his breath, straightened and nodded to Alina, "is Anton, my guide and translator for the duration of my stay within this fine country. Not that I'm complaining," he said turning to Anton. "You're completely charming." The look Anton gave Nikolai suggested that the feeling might not be mutual, but Nikolai grinned even more broadly and slapped him on the back. "I'm starving. Anton, can you recommend a place here for the three of us to eat?"

Alina sipped coffee as Nikolai filled her in on the last four months of gossip at the lab and consumed what Alina judged to be obscene amounts of herring. He seemed to be enjoying eating the fish in a way that made Anton wince. While Nikolai tried to embody the expression  _bit off more than he could chew_ , Alina took the opportunity to tell him a little about her time in Os Alta. When he was nearly finished with the fish, she asked: "What are your plans for when you get back home?"  


Once he'd swallowed, he leaned back and put down his fork, apparently satisfied that he'd sufficiently disgusted his guide. "I'm going to be working for my mom."

"I'm sure Senator Lantsov will be glad to have you joining the staff."

"The, ah, confirmation hearings were last week, actually." He carefully folded his napkin and placed it next to his knife. "I'll be working for  _Secretary_  Lantsov."  


"Wow," Alina said, blinking. She hadn't been following American politics at all. "Congrats."

"The old Secretary of State was – well, my mom will do much better." Nikolai sighed and looked at her. "I didn't come here to talk about that, Alina."

"Why did you come, then?"

"I ..." He straightened and ran a hand through his hair. "I needed to see that you were okay." 

"What did you think might have happened? You'd find me chained in a basement or something?"

"I've read Ravkan folklore – it's not out of the realm of possibility." He studied her, and for a moment she was reminded of the way the general looked at her, like there was something that wasn't quite expected. The moment passed and he was Nikolai again. "I miss you."

She smiled and reached for his hand. "I miss you, too." After a moment, Nikolai squeezed her fingers. Then he sighed dramatically and pushed back from the table. "Anton," he shouted in a way that seemed primarily designed to embarrass the translator, "lead Miss Starkov and me to your finest milliner. I must have one of those hats I see everyone wearing."

* * *

It had been over a week since she'd seen the general. Whatever border skirmish this was was keeping him busy, and her mind had been almost completely occupied with thinking about him. In a way, she was glad for the distraction he provided; any moment she spent poring over their interaction was time she wasn't spending contemplating revenge. In the last week, she'd spent plenty of time considering what she wanted in relation to the general. 

Mostly, she wanted  _him_.   


It hurt to admit that to herself. She liked the independence of her life in Ravka and she wasn't even sure the extent to which the attraction was anything other than physical, but ever since that night there had been no keeping her mind off him. He seemed to have opened the door to a place in her that she hadn't even been aware existed.

Which was fine. Totally fine.  _Definitely fine_. Except for the fact that she had no idea what to do the next time she saw him. Every time she thought that, however, her body let her know it certainly had ideas of its own.  


But.  _But_.  


When she and Genya entered the president's ballroom that evening, she'd been prepared to find the general still absent. She'd spent the entire afternoon trying to convince herself that she didn't care if he showed up or not, and to prove this to herself she spent a couple minutes on the balcony before looking to see if he was back in Os Alta.

He wasn't difficult to spot – as usual, he was surrounded by a group of people and not far away from Ivan. She carefully studied the edge of the crowd, taking her time before allowing her gaze to travel towards him. When she finally looked at the center of the crowd she found he was staring right at her. He was a couple dozen yards away but the look he was giving her was suggestive of something far more intimate.

Her whole body flushed as he dipped his head to her, keeping his eyes on hers, staring at her with such naked desire that she wondered how the person still speaking to him even  _thought_  he was part of the conversation.  


Minutes passed. The orchestra played and people started dancing. The general continued his conversation without ever letting his eyes leave hers. The air felt thick. She licked her lips. 

The general excused himself, spoke briefly to Ivan, and walked towards the opposite doors, breaking eye contact with her for the first time. She went after him, shoving through the crowd to keep him in sight. He left the ballroom, started down a hallway, and she followed several paces behind, leaving enough space between them that it wouldn't have been obvious to anyone else what was going on. A few turns and they were alone in a shadowed corridor, the music from the party faintly making its way to them. He turned to face her, his eyes dark, breath heavy. Waiting.

And for all that she'd run after him, she let him wait. She admired the black of his uniform and how the crisp edges blended into the dark corner they'd found for themselves, let the charged air keep the distance between them. She was aware of these few moments, when she had the chance to turn away. The chance to walk back into the celebration and pretend like his look didn't make her shiver down her spine. She had the chance to go back.

"Alina."

His voice was low, a growl that was more plea than command. She lifted onto the balls of her feet and kissed him.

It was only an instant before he had both arms around her and was kissing her back, hard. He'd been sure of her, sure she'd make this move, but before she had time to examine the thought her back was up against the wall. One of his hands clutched her waist and the other was in her hair.

He kissed her bare neck and worked his way towards her jaw, trailing his tongue along her skin slowly, deliberately. She shivered. The feeling was familiar and new. She wanted it, wanted him. Wanted this, whatever it was. She slid her hand beneath the shirt of his uniform and rested it on his cool skin, his muscles firm and shifting beneath her palm. Her body tensed like a coil as he grazed his teeth over the hollow of her throat.  

"You," he murmured into her collarbone, "are so distracting."

She gave a puff of laughter and let her tongue find his as he dug his fingers into her hips. The length of his body pressed against hers was firm, enticing. She felt lightheaded, flooded with desire. He slid one knee between hers and moved his hand from her hair to her face. Her breath become shallow. 

The song ended, followed by a light round of applause. There was a party going on, and she should be there — they should both be there — but instead they were making out in a dark hallway. He bit her earlobe gently and she gave a small moan. One hand moved down the side of her body as his lips followed the curve of her ear.

"Come back with me."

She blinked, willing her brain to start working again as he traced his tongue down the side of her throat. She forced herself to exhale, then inhaled, slowly. Her breath was ragged. "The event just started."

He kissed her under her ear. The move was tender, hungry.  “We can leave in half an hour,” he murmured, lips barely brushing her skin. “Come back with me," he repeated, breath warm on her neck. “Please.”

This was a new general, one Alina hadn't seen. One who let his desires get the better of him for a moment, one who made requests rather than commands. One who sounded almost lost at the idea that she might refuse.

"Okay," she whispered, unaware that she'd been holding her breath until she said it. He pulled her towards him and kissed her throughly before taking a step back. His expression was suddenly blank; he let his gaze sweep over her, calm, taking stock.

_This_  general she recognized.  


He indicated the end of the hallway with his head. "Washroom is that way. Then go back to the hall." His gaze lingered, the look from earlier in the evening. "I'll find you in thirty minutes."

* * *

They spent the drive in silence, Alina's stomach beginning to knot. Now that there was space between them again she wondered if she should use the time to think more clearly, maybe reconsider. But she'd decided before he'd asked, hadn't she? She wanted to regret it, to  _not_  want this. But she didn't.  


Just as the silence stretched into discomfort the car stopped and the general opened the door. She stepped out of the vehicle and saw they were in front of a large house, tastefully dark on the outside. He held out a hand to her. She slipped her palm into his and followed him through the door. 

There were signs all around of domestic help — softly lit lamps, water and fruit left on the kitchen counter they passed by — but Alina didn't see anyone as they walked upstairs.

He pushed open half of a pair of double doors and led her into a room with a floor to ceiling window looking out over Os Alta. Alina let out a soft gasp at the view. The light twinkled and the city looked calm as it never felt during the day. Peaceful. She could almost pretend the country wasn't at war, that she wasn't in the military. That she wasn't here with a general.

She saw his reflection approach from behind, saw him look down at the top of her head. He began pulling the pins in her hair out, one at a time. Her hair fell over her shoulders, and the pins winked in the reflection, falling stars over the city. 

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. His eyes reflected the lamplight, the grey soft as they settled on hers. He brought his hands down to the top button on her dress uniform and released it from the fabric. She forced herself to stand still and keep his gaze as his hands moved to the second button, the third. Her mouth was dry. He untied the sash and slid the shirt off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. His fingers ghosted down her spine before pulling at the zipper on her skirt. It pooled around her ankles.

He stepped back and let his gaze travel her body, his eyelids heavy. She felt self conscious under his stare but refused to squirm. He watched her for a beat. Two. Finally she broke the silence. "Are you just going to stand there or —"

Before she could finish the sentence his mouth was on hers, the heel of one hand digging into her hip. His long fingers twined in her hair pulling it back and exposing more of her throat, which he trailed with his mouth, his lips desperate on her skin. She managed to get his dress jacket off and he pulled her undershirt over her head as he moved them towards the bed, letting her fall onto it as it hit the back of her legs. 

He held himself above her, muscles tense, his body only just not touching hers. He clenched his jaw around an internal struggle, and when he spoke his voice was low. “Tell me this is what you want.”

Oh, she wanted this. Her body thrummed and her pulse beat hard in her stomach. His breath was shallow and his jaw muscles clenched hard. He looked like he was on the edge of some precipice, barely holding on, afraid of being swept away. Afraid of drowning.

"Yes," she said, barely a whisper. His eyes flickered and she spoke louder. "Yes."

His lips pressed hard against hers, then his mouth was on her shoulder, the tops of her breasts, her stomach. But she'd seen, for a moment, the man she hadn't seen before tonight, the one who looked afraid of drowning. 

She pulled him on top of her. They'd drown together.

* * *

There was a moment of panic when she opened her eyes in the dark and didn't remember where she was. The smooth black of the sheets reminded her.

She rolled over and saw the general sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, lamp turned on beside him, one side of his head resting on his fingertips as he read the contents of the manilla folders in his lap. He was shirtless and wore soft dark pants, the shadows from the lamp accentuating the muscles on his chest and abdomen. Alina remembered how his body had felt pressed against hers. She swallowed hard.

He glanced up. "You're awake."

She nodded and sat, pulling the sheet with her, conscious that she was still naked. It was uncomfortable, in his bed, without him, but it didn't look like he had any intention of getting back in. "What time is it?"

"Early still. You don't need to be up for few more hours."

"You didn't sleep well?"

He tugged one corner of his lips up. "I've spent my life at war, Alina. I haven't slept well in years." 

She ran a hand over her face. Small talk wasn't a speciality of hers at the best of times, and the lack of sleep made her incautious. "What are you working on?"

He closed the folders. "Why."

"Just curious what’s keeping your attention."

He tapped one corner of the folders on his palm a few times. She thought she saw his expression shift, or maybe it was a shadow. "Is there something else you think I should be paying attention to?"

She let out a puff of laughter. "Are you going to make me beg?"

"Maybe." He put down the folders, walked to the foot of the bed, and yanked the sheets onto the floor. The look he gave her almost burned. "But not tonight."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally! let me know what you think :) more to come. ~*~


	10. Chapter 10

Like before, the general would meet her after her Ravkan lesson and walk her to her barracks while she updated him on what her division had been working on that day. But now she sometimes accompanied him in his car once they’d made it back to the barracks – he’d offer a few times a week, and unless she had a plan with Genya she’d take him up on it. She looked forward to the nights they had together, liked seeing the secret side of him when his intensity and anger turned to desperation. She liked bringing him there, and as for the places he brought her … well. She liked those, too.

Their relationship was more physical than romantic, and other than the first evening was confined completely within the four walls of the general's bedroom. They didn't eat together, didn't  _date_ , and when they were in that room they didn't talk much. 

Whatever this unspoken thing between them was, it wasn’t something Alina discussed with anyone else. The general would discreetly return Alina to her barracks in time for her to go for a run before heading to the lab for the day. She slept a little less than before but she felt stronger somehow, less alone. 

This new addition was agreeing with her nicely.

* * *

It had been close to two months since Sergei and Marie had started working together. A week in, Zoya had pulled Alina aside, a frown etched deep on her bright red lips.

"We need Marie working on the river turbines," the lieutenant had said. "Not working on some photon flow pipe dream just because she can't bear to sit an extra three meters away from Sergei."

Alina had shrugged. "You're the commanding officer here – have them present what they've been doing and if it doesn't look good to you, they'll stop working together."

Zoya had narrowed her eyes at Alina in response, anticipating some trap, but this was one time when Alina found herself in agreement with Nazyalensky. The extent to which Marie and Sergei had become inseparable concerned her – and it apparently concerned Nadia, too, from the looks she'd been casting their way. So Alina had arranged for the two of them to present their work; after the presentation, even Zoya stopped complaining. 

Sergei stopped by Alina's workstation and held up a cell. "We're going to go up on the roof to try the new photon streamer Davna made. Want to join?"

The roof of the building that housed the lab was the same stark gravel Alina had seen on top of buildings in America, but it also had fewer railings and she disliked spending time up there. In the summer, however, it was a much easier way to test out prototypes than driving into the mountains and for things like a photon streamer the location wasn't as important. Sergei and Marie had set up a couple chairs on the roof; Sergei, ears turning slightly pink, offered Alina his seat, and she sat as they set up the test.

The idea had been remarkably similar to a stream, and they'd spent time working with Ana on her idea of creating a current of electrons as well – Alina was begrudgingly ready to admit that Marie's knowledge of water power had become invaluable. It made her wonder what Nadia or Zoya might contribute if they spent some time getting up to speed on Solnyshko, but she wasn't ready to have  _that_  conversation with her lieutenant just yet.

They watched the cell absorb the sun's rays in silence, waiting for the preliminary results they'd get at the five minute mark. Beyond the edge of the roof lay Os Alta, and beyond that, the mountains. Alina sat with her soldiers and looked into the distance.

"Beautiful," Sergei said. He hadn't even been looking at Marie.

* * *

"There you are," Zoya said one morning when Alina arrived at her workstation, loudly enough that everyone around them turned to see. "I was starting to worry you’d had enough of us."

Alina was late. She'd woken up to the general shaking her leg gently, and when she opened her eyes she found him buttoning his shirt. Despite the dozen or so nights she'd spent at his place, he'd never been less than completely dressed when she woke up in the morning. Seeing his hair wet from the shower felt strangely intimate, in spite of everything.

When he had satisfied himself that she was awake, he'd shrugged on his suit jacket and fastened his cufflinks. "There were incidents I had to deal with this morning and you should be at work already. Get dressed and I'll drop you there."

His car had stopped a couple blocks from her lab, far enough away that she was unlikely to run into anyone she knew. She had jogged directly to the lab hoping no one would notice she was late, but of course Nazyalensky did. Luckily, Alina thought, smoothing out her hair that she hadn't had time to brush properly, that's all her lieutenant seemed to notice. 

"No need to worry,  _Leytenant_ ," Alina assured her, sitting down. "I could never have enough of you."

Alina had made it through her email and was just starting to get to work in earnest when she looked up from her workstation and startled.

"Genya! What are you doing here?"

"I came by your room this morning and you weren't there. I wanted to make sure everything was okay."

Alina felt herself beginning to flush and covered it with a cough. "Everything’s fine. I just wanted to get started early this morning." It was true enough – she  _had_  wanted to get started early this morning – though she said it quietly in case anyone felt the need to point out that she’d shown up late.

Genya quirked an eyebrow. "You wanted to get started in the same clothes as yesterday?"

Now Alina’s blush crept, uncontrolled, over her neck and cheeks. "How did you know?" she whispered, horrified.

"I didn't, but now I do!" Genya laughed then grew more serious. "You owe me an explanation this evening. And details!" She clapped. "Oh, am I going to want details. And a name." She raised both eyebrows at Alina before she sauntered off. 

Most of the heads in the lab turned to follow Genya as she made her way across the lab, but Alina buried her face in her hands. 

* * *

"Okay, who is it?"

Alina had had three bites of dinner before Genya had gotten straight to the point. 

"Who is what?" Alina asked, stalling for time. They were eating late, after her Ravkan lesson and update with the general, so the cafeteria was mostly deserted. Still, she glanced around to make sure that no one could be listening.

"Don’t play stupid with me. You're seeing someone and you haven't told me. Details. All of them. Now."

"It's not really  _seeing,_ " she attempted.

" _Alina_ ," Genya warned.

"I don't know that I should be –"

" _Now_. Who is it?"

She avoided Genya’s stare and poked at her food with her fork. The herring didn't offer any solutions. 

"You can tell me," Genya offered. "We're friends, right?"

Alina couldn't argue with that. She gave the fish a final push across her plate and kept her eyes down. "General Morozova."

Genya didn’t respond for several seconds. When Alina got the courage to look up, the woman's mouth was closed, her face completely blank. 

"You're not angry, are you?" Alina asked. "Don't be angry with me."

"Angry with you?" Genya's voice was distant, and Alina grew more concerned.

"For not telling you." A terrible thought occurred to Alina. "Or for – you're not interested – I mean – "

Genya's laugh let Alina breathe again. "God, Alina, no." She reached across the table to grab Alina's hand. "I'm not – he and I – no.  _No_. And of course I'm not mad at you. I just was surprised." She hesitated for a moment, rubbing her thumb over the back of Alina's hand. "And ... be careful."

Alina raised her eyebrows at this. "Careful of what? You trust him, don't you?"

"With my life." Genya sighed, and then smiled – it was forced, but Alina was relieved to see it all the same. "Now, tell me how work is going. What ridiculous thing did Zoya say today?"

* * *

Geyna's footsteps echoed in the hallway of the administration building, her shoes hitting the floor hard. The guards were accustomed to seeing her there and let her through, though they cast glances at each other as she passed. 

She stopped in front of the office door, where Ivan stood. She examined his face, narrowed her eyes at him. "You knew."

He shrugged noncommittally. She made a disgusted snort, but he didn't try to stop her as she shoved open the door to the general's office. A major, seated facing the general behind his desk, jumped at the sound, and turned towards her. The general glanced up at her from where he sat and registered the look on her face as she stood, hands clenched to fists at her side.

"A moment," he said mildly to the major, who stood and left. The door clicked quietly behind him. 

" _What the hell_ ," Genya asked through gritted teeth, "do you think you're doing?" The general motioned for her to sit and she walked in front of the chair and planted her hands on his desk, leaning over him. " _Answer me._ "

"I assume," he said, using two fingers to move a paper out of the way of her palm, "that you've spoken with Alina."

That didn't deserve a response. She glared at him, and he tilted his head back, matching her stare with a calm one of his own.

"What I'm doing," he said finally, "is making sure things don't go farther from the original plan."

"What you’re  _doing_ ," she hissed, "is using her."

"We’ve been using her since she landed here." The emphasis on the first word of the sentence was not lost on Genya. "This, at least, she’s consented to."

Her nails dug into the wood of his desk, leaving shallow, half-moon marks. "I won't stand for it."

"After everything,  _this_  is what you won't stand for?" He didn't bother looking disgusted, and that somehow made the accusation worse. "You're dismissed, Safin." She opened her mouth. " _Dismissed._ " She glared at him and he held her gaze, unblinking. "Show the  _meydzhor_  back in on your way out."

* * *

Genya had gotten faster at concealing Alina's scar, but it still took slightly longer than half an hour. 

"I wonder," Alina had said during one of those sessions as she watched the crown of Genya's head bent over her palm, "what cut me. Was there something stored under the altar that could have left a scar like that?"

"The altar?" Genya was largely distracted with recreating the lines on Alina's palm.

"The altar I was found under, in the church. I don't know what they store under the altar. Do you?"

Genya's hand froze, brush still. She didn't look up. "You were found in a church?"

"Yes, why?" 

After a couple seconds, Geyna resumed her work on Alina's palm. "I hadn't realized," she said finally, shaking her head and dispelling any lingering worries Alina might have had. "A church. How's that for symbolism?"

* * *

"How are things going with your division?"

Harshaw glanced up, apparently pleased at the interruption. "It turns out that we're able to get a lot more done with so many more people. I feel like we're getting close to having something ready that can handle the summertime energy storage requirements we got from you."

"Summer's the easy part," Alina pointed out.

Harshaw nodded. "I think we can get winter, too. My main concern now is moving the energy between the cells and the power plants – that's a lot of length of unprotected wire."

Alina had been getting better at politics, but her understanding of military and defensive maneuvers was still weak. "Can we just ... er ... protect it?"

He laughed. "We're working on it. How's your progress on getting your junctions to handle a wider range of incoming photons?"

Alina sighed. "Not great," she admitted. "There's an idea I have that I can't quite grasp. It's like those things that you can't see if you look at them closely."

"Ghosts?" Harshaw suggested.

Alina raised an eyebrow. "I was thinking pointillism."

"Ah, yes, that. My knowledge of ghosts is significantly stronger than my knowledge of art, unfortunately."

"You have some experience being haunted?" she teased. She had expected a joke in return, but the look he gave her was serious and sad. 

He gave a short exhale that wasn't quite a laugh. "You don't?"

* * *

_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well is the best revenge._  
_Living well –_

Alina decided that living well was bullshit. She was ready to rip her hair out.

* * *

She thought she’d never stop being amazed at the view from the general’s bedroom. The days were long now, and as the sun set over the mountain range to the west she could see the lights slowly come on across the city. There was something magical, something that she wanted to drink in and savor. She lingered at the window longer than usual, until the sky was fully dark. The general sat in his chair, watching her. Patient.

But tonight she’d been stalling. Finally, she drew her eyes away from the city to meet his. He wore the same vaguely expectant expression that he often did in public, markedly different from how she typically saw him here. Either way, she had his attention, and she’d waited long enough to ask this. She rubbed her thumb along her scar and took a deep breath. "There’s something I want your help with." 

He nodded. She walked a few steps and perched awkwardly on the edge of the mattress.

"I’ve read about the massacres. About the massacre in Dva Stolba. About what the rebels did afterwards. I’ve tried to stop thinking about it, but I can’t, and I feel …" She laughed bitterly. "For the first time in my life, I feel  _angry_  about it. Now that I know, and the more I know, I want revenge."

He steepled his hands, fingertips resting lightly together. "And you’re coming to me because?"

She knew him well enough by now to know that this wasn’t meant to dissuade her – he was just gathering information. She cleared her throat. "Genya said that living well is the best revenge. I thought you might feel differently."

"Why would you think that."

Now he was being deliberately difficult, and she let her irritation show. "Because I  _do_  pay attention. Wherever you go, everyone agrees with you. At parties, the entire ballroom will clamor for your attention and call you a hero. You can't get that many people to agree on  _anything_  unless they're terrified of something. It’s clear to me by now that no one is scared of the president." She rested her hands on the comforter behind her and leaned back, cocking her head to one side. "Why, then, is everyone so afraid of  _you_?"

His lips moved into a humorless smile. "What sort of help are you looking for."

"I saw that no one has ever stood trial for the massacre of Dva Stolba." She glanced at him for confirmation, he nodded slightly. "I want to find the people who did it, and I want to hold them accountable. I want a trial. I want them to pay for what they did." Her voice had turned harsh, and she felt the gravel in her throat. 

"And you think this would make you feel better."

"I do." She waited for some judgement, surprise, but none came. The silence stretched between them until she couldn't take it anymore. "Will you help me find them?"

The general folded his hands in his lap, crossed one ankle over the other. "No."

"No?" she asked, incredulous.

"You asked. That’s my answer."

Her ears began to burn, partly from the sting of refusal, partly from anger. "Don’t tell me you believe in living well, too," she spat.

"Hardly." His lips flattened and his jaw clenched. "How much do you know about how the civil war ended?"

She gestured impatiently. "What does that have to do with it?"

"The rebels were a centrally organized group," he explained, ignoring her comment. "Towards the end there was a strategy shift, and it required everyone – leaders, foot soldiers, everyone – to be together to plan. It was too risky for them to all be in one place, so they divided up. Two meetings. Two villages. I heard about this a few days beforehand, a rumor, and sent out intelligence units. The intelligence was good.

"We didn’t have many options. The two villages weren’t close, and there was no way we could secretly get an infantry division to either location. We knew they had backup meeting locations, but we didn’t know what they were, so if they had any idea we were aware of their movements the opportunity would be lost."

This is was only the second time Alina had heard anyone speak at any length about the civil war other than Harshaw’s explanation of the university massacres. The fire in her stomach burned. "What did you do?"

"I sent small groups, ones that could move quietly without detection. Demolitions experts, snipers – the aim being maximal damage with minimum manpower. We attacked both locations simultaneously." He shifted, though Alina got the sense it was more out of concern for her potential discomfort than his own. "With such a small force you can’t be discriminating, you can’t take prisoners. We had one chance. We took it."

Her breath was shallow, careful – she was afraid of thinking too deeply about what he was saying, but was equally afraid of ignoring it. She turned what he'd said around her in mind to see if there was a way to come to another conclusion. She couldn't find one. 

She spoke slowly. "So the reason you won’t help me find them ..."

"The reason," he confirmed, "is because I’ve already killed them all."

Alina sank back onto the bed. This possibility hadn’t crossed her mind, and her hunger for revenge began to pale against the the sheer bloodbath of reality. Against the reality that she was in the same room as the man who'd ordered that massacre. She prepared to feel shock, anger, but neither came – the rebels had killed people, killed her family. They weren't simply bystanders. Unless –

Her breath caught. She forced out the next question, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the ceiling. "Were there civilians in the villages?"

"There was no way to evacuate without the rebels noticing."

Her stomach twisted. "You killed innocent people," she whispered, voice shaking.

"And thousands of Ravkans are alive today as a result."

She clenched her eyes shut. She’d thought the desire for revenge had been awful, but this.  _This_  was worse. A man who can order civilian deaths, can justify it to his country and himself – that's what a monster is.

She let out a sharp bark of laughter. "So that's why people are afraid of you."

"That's not half of it, Alina." 

But what would she have had him do, let the rebels live to take more lives? The feeling that was rushing through her was grief for the civilians killed, but it was also something else. It was the carefully unexamined feeling that had washed over her when she first learned that no rebels were left alive. When she let herself put a name to the feeling, she realized it was relief. 

How much of a monster did that make  _her_?

She heard him stand and walk over to her, felt the mattress shift beneath his weight. She didn't need to open her eyes to know that he was studying her face, looking for her reaction. Her grief and shame collided and a tear rolled down her cheek, burying itself in her hair. He traced a fingertip across her face, mimicking the trail, but made no motion to wipe the tear away.

"Do you want to be alone."

Could she be here with him? Could she judge him for his actions when she'd come to him seeking revenge, when her tears weren't for lives lost, but because he'd shown her a side of herself that scared her even more than he did?

"No," she said finally. "I really don't." 

The indentation on the mattress rolled her towards him as he lay down beside her. He kissed her – slowly, carefully – and she pushed the massacre out of her mind. What he had done, what she had felt: those were things of the past. There were new wars to worry about, new battles to fight. 

There were things happening today that needed her attention. 

* * *

Eva, Alexei, and Davna had spent the last couple weeks assembling a rotating collection of photovoltaic cells on the rooftop. When Alina went up now, half the space was taken by those cells, stretching from one end of the roof to the other. Far too close to the edge for Alina's comfort. 

"We need a time lapse camera or something," Eva said, hands on her hips. Alexei stood next to her, similarly positioned. "The movement is so gradual we'll never notice it standing up here."

"The gradual movement is just what we wanted – it's a good thing," Alina said, and Eva made an equivocating gesture. 

"It's hard to show off if there's nothing dramatic."

Alina blinked. At the general's advice, she'd been spending more of her time on a narrative of Solnyshko, ready to sell it to whoever happened to be listening, but she hadn't realized that anyone else in her division had been thinking about the politics of it. "Is that a concern for you?" she asked cautiously.

"We didn't have to worry about it at all in our old division. I just want to be sure that General Morozova doesn't cut funding for this one, too."

"The general is very invested in Solnyshko." Alina wasn't sure why she was feeling defensive, and she certainly hoped that her expression wasn't giving anything away.

Alexei shrugged and Eva turned to him. "Maybe we should blow something up. That would look good on film."

Alina sighed.  _Of course that's where they went_. "Please don't blow up my cells." 

* * *

The common area in Alina's barracks had been quiet when she and Genya had gone there this evening, and they had been largely uninterrupted in the hour they'd been watching the movie. Genya, concerned that Alina's dislike for herring was keeping her from getting all the necessary nutrients, had brought some of her own personal food supply, and it was scattered on the coffee table in front of them as they sat on the couch.

"Wait, so which one is he again?" Alina gestured to the television screen, and Genya smiled internally. She was trying to catch Alina up on the most popular Ravkan movies – there weren’t that many, so she hadn’t thought it would take very long – but Alina was finding it strangely difficult to follow the plot.

"He’s the good guy." Genya carefully extracted a chip before offering the bag to Alina, who waved it away. She then offered a handle of vodka, which Alina considered for a moment before taking a Ravkan-sized swallow of it.  _Atta girl_.

She cringed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before holding the bottle back out to Genya. "I don’t know why everyone in this movie has to look alike."

"They don’t all look alike," Genya pointed out. "They just look Ravkan."

Alina sighed. "Okay, so in this scene the good guy is trying to figure out what? How to beat the bad guy? Isn’t that the plot of every movie ever?"

"Now you’re getting the hang of it."

Genya watched Alina furrow her brow as she tried to follow the plot and the dialogue. Her Ravkan had improved a lot – even Ivan was begrudgingly impressed – but it still clearly hard for her to pick up on the nuances in the dialogue. Genya was glad she was trying.

Genya’s phone buzzed and she glanced at the screen. The general had had the good sense to not get in touch with her since she'd barged into his office a couple weeks prior. She wasn't as angry as she had been then – she'd studied Alina carefully and had convinced herself that she was doing okay – but she still found herself irritated to receive a message from him in a way she'd never been before. He would have had the sense to wait for her to talk to him when she was ready, so if he was requesting her presence now, it was for a good reason. She stood, stretching, as Alina gave her a questioning look.

"I have to go, unfortunately." Genya leaned down and kissed Alina on the forehead. "Duty calls. Keep watching and we’ll talk about the twist at the ending later."

"There’s a twist?" Alina asked in mock surprise. "Don’t ruin it for me."

Genya smiled as she made her way to the general’s office. She  _liked_  Alina. Alina was funny, took her work seriously, was kind. And she was honest.

This last part surprised Genya the most. Genya had always been good at reading people and had gotten better over the years, but with Alina there wasn’t anything to read. She didn’t have an ulterior motive; she wasn’t trying to get anything out of anyone. Either that, Genya thought, or she was very, very good at hiding it, better than anyone else Genya knew. Given the people Genya knew, she thought that was unlikely.

She liked Alina and enjoyed their time together. And if it was just the calm before the storm – well, she was glad there was calm at all.

Genya nodded at Fedyor and pushed open the door to the general’s office. Ivan was already there, seated, and she slid into the seat beside him as the general nodded in greeting. There was a moment of silence during which a lot was said – she didn't miss the way the general tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement that she'd come when he had texted despite their last meeting. She set her lips in response. He read her expression and nodded, satisfied. "Tomorrow," he said by way of explanation, "the foreign minister is going to Fjerda."

" _To_  Fjerda? Why on earth?" Genya asked.

"Negotiations."

"But  _in_  Fjerda? Can't they do those by phone?"

"It’s an unnecessary risk," Ivan grumbled.

"Foreign ministers are paid to take those," the general countered. "I need Ivan here, so Genya, I want you to accompany the minister."

"For what reason?" she asked.

"Find something. And take care of whatever else comes up."

"What about the president?" Ivan asked. Genya cut her eyes to him, but he ignored the glare.

"I’ll take care of him," the general said mildly. "If everything goes well I expect this to last about a couple weeks."

"And if it goes poorly?"

"Then it’s up to you." He made a motion to indicate they were dismissed and turned to the papers on his desk. Ivan stood and left the room. Genya almost followed,  _wanted_  to, but in the end she hovered, waiting for the general's attention. She owed it to him to let him know before she left. And the rest, she owed to Alina.

She cleared her throat and the general looked up, eyebrows raised expectantly. "Alina said she was found in a church."

"A church?" Genya nodded. He leaned back in his chair and stared into the middle distance. "Interesting."

She took a deep breath to ready herself for what she had to say next. "She trusts you."

His eyes snapped back to hers. "Good."

He was being deliberately laconic, a technique she'd seen him use with other people frequently. Never, until now, with her. She didn't like it. "Don't hurt her."

"I assure you she's enjoying herself just fine." The dryness in his voice annoyed her further.

"I mean it."

"It's war, Genya. Everyone gets hurt." He studied her, his eyes slightly narrowed. "Right?"

* * *

Genya texted Alina letting her know that she'd be out of town with the foreign minister for a while. 

_wardrobe emergencies?_  Alina replied. 

_something like that :)_

* * *

Alina lay on her side, the general's chest against her bare back, his fingertips running lightly up and down her arm. A breeze came in through the open window. Her uniform lay crumpled on the floor where she'd thrown it an hour ago, the emblem of her division —  _his_  division — visible. The silence was comfortable, and she waited a few moments before speaking.

"Do you worry about sleeping with someone who reports to you?"

His fingers continued their trail on her arm. "Someone who reports to someone who reports to someone who reports to me?"

Alina rolled her eyes at the pedantry. "Yes, that." She felt him shrug.

"There's a mandatory draft and reserve service and I oversee the military. Most of Ravka reports to me in some way." She almost admired the dodge in his response, his ability to be undistracted from touching her skin, but she wasn't ready to let it go.

"Not the president and his division, though."

Now his fingers stopped. He lifted his hand and placed it on her shoulder, squeezing gently. "No," he agreed quietly, "not them."

She had another question, but she felt the pressure on her shoulder gently rolling her onto her back. He pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, the fingers of one hand wrapping around her waist. His lips began a path down her body, and, after a moment, she'd forgotten what it was she had wanted to ask, anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update -- let me know what you think! I've really appreciated the comments I've gotten so far :) 
> 
> I've also posted a link to my tumblr in my profile. If you want to come scream with me about grisha or the general or anything else, I'd love to hear from you. ~*~


	11. Chapter 11

It was early, nearly ridiculously so. With Genya out of the country Alina had spent each of the last several nights at the general's place and the lack of sleep was starting to get to her. The hum of tires on the road on the car ride back to her barracks each morning tended to exacerbate her tiredness.

"You're giving a speech next month."

She had been dozing off, but now she started in her seat. She turned towards the general, who was looking out the window at the sun as it began to make its way over the mountains in the distance. The light spilled across his features, gave a soft edge to a face that so often looked like it could cut her. "Where?"

"At the event where _solnyshko_ will be prototyped." 

Alina frowned. The event was six weeks away, and she was already beginning to feel the time pressure. Her ideas for increasing the range of frequencies each junction could handle hadn't been panning out. She really didn't want to add preparing a speech on top of everything else. And even the thought of public speaking made her slightly nauseated. "Is that necessary?"

"Yes." Now he looked at her. They were discussing business, but here in the privacy of the car she thought she saw a flash across his face that suggested his mind wasn't completely on the topic. It disappeared quickly, and she hid her own mixture of feelings with a yawn. "You'll want to spend your Ravkan lessons working on it."

She hadn't even made the connection that it would have to be in Ravkan. She groaned. "That's going to be so painful. What am I going to have to say?"

" _Leytenant_ Nazyalensky will fill you in when you get into the lab." 

"You're bringing it up then passing this off to her?" That irked Alina more than she wished it did. They'd made it this far without having to explicitly navigate the reporting structure between them; she had known it wouldn't last, but it bothered her all the same. 

"She's your commanding officer. I'm letting you know what you can expect so you have a chance to prepare." The look he gave her was assessing, professional, and she rubbed a hand across her face to cover her irritation. The car stopped in the parking garage of her barracks and he opened the manilla folders on his lap, dismissing her. "See you this evening, Alina."

* * *

There had been only been a handful of seconds between the time they exited the car at the general's house that evening and the point at which he began to consume her body with his own – she'd had barely enough time to think, nowhere close to enough time to bring up anything she wanted to discuss. She was beginning to wonder if that was deliberate.

Now, though, as her breath came back to her, she rolled to one side and propped herself up on her elbow. The general lay on his back beside her; she could see the pulse of his heart in his neck, the sheen of sweat on his chest. In moments like this, unguarded as she never saw him outside this room, he seemed to her like a creature all her own, one she'd made, forged in this bed. He was hungry, possessive, vulnerable. Hers. 

She forced her eyes up to his face, and there she saw something else. The resemblance was obvious – now that she knew to look for it, anyway. "You didn't tell me Baghra was your mother."

When she'd shown up to her Ravkan lesson that afternoon with a Zoya-approved outline for a speech, Baghra had snorted. "You're giving a speech in Ravkan in six weeks and my son just told you now?"

Alina's jaw had dropped. She had closed her mouth, shaken her head. "What?"

Baghra just snorted again. "He didn't tell you that either?" 

"He ..." Alina had considered asking for clarification, but when she had really looked at Baghra, the cut of her cheekbones, the set of her jaw – once Alina had seen it, she wondered how she'd missed it before. She had sworn quietly and a blush had crept onto her cheeks before she had had a chance to think better of it. She had wondered if Baghra was as keen an observer of people as her son. She'd hoped not. 

So now she watched his face carefully to see if he'd be surprised that she knew. Contrite, perhaps, that he hadn't mentioned it before. But his expression didn't shift. "I didn't tell you. Should I have?"

"Don't you think it's relevant?"

He turned his head towards her. "Relevant to what?"

"To me. To," she gestured to the space between them, "this. You think its not important?"

His gaze followed the movement of her hand. "Not particularly." 

She slit her eyes at him. "You can be incredibly frustrating."

"Mmm." The light from the lamp illuminated his irises briefly before he reached for her and pulled her towards him, angling his head so his lips brushed her neck. She turned her face slightly to allow him better access to her throat, and she felt the gentle pressure of teeth around the heat of his tongue. 

She persisted with her question even as her breath began to leave her again. "Anything else you consider irrelevant that I might want to know?"

"Many things, I'm sure." His breath was warm on her skin, and she shivered in spite of the heat. "But perhaps we should discuss this later."

* * *

They did not discuss it later. Alina wasn't even remotely surprised.

* * *

There wasn't a way to do get the junctions to do what she wanted. Alina had tried everything over the last few months, and nothing she was able to simulate came even close to being able to capture energy from a wide enough range of photons. 

She buried her head in her arms. _This is not working. It isn't working. It isn't going to work._

When she looked up, she saw Ana perched on the edge of the workstation closest to Alina, looking at her carefully. "Approximating infinity not going the way you were hoping?"

"Not _going_ at all," Alina said miserably. 

"Why don't you show me what you've tried so far? You've barely talked about it with anyone else."

"That's because it doesn't work."

Ana nodded at Alina's computer. "Come on, pull it up. Walk me through it."

Alina sighed. _Might as well_.  

They went through the last few months of the work Alina had done, the things she'd tried, the simulations she'd run, the reasons why each of them had failed. Ana was mostly silent, asking a question here and there. 

"And that's it," Alina said, closing the laptop. "That's all. I can't figure out a way to optimize the material for more than one frequency of photon, which means that we're just going to lose the energy from any photons that aren't that exact frequency."

Ana had produced her switchblade and was flicking it thoughtfully between her fingers, though Alina noticed she kept it a respectful distance away. "Too bad we can't control the light source. If we had everything coming in at the same frequency, this wouldn't be a problem," Ana pondered. "It'd be a dark, colorless world, but our energy conversion numbers would be great."

Shortly after that, Ana stood and left, but Alina barely noticed. She finally saw the idea that had been vapor in her mind for so many months – it suddenly materialized, slammed into her consciousness and left her breathless. That was it. That was the solution.

They couldn't control the frequencies of light that hit the earth, but they _could_ try to control the frequencies that hit Solnyshko. They could take all photons of any incoming frequency, but only let through the ones that were at the optimal wavelength for the cell to capture. That wouldn't have any impact on the amount of energy produced, though; the important thing was that the same thing that filtered out any photons of the wrong wavelength would serve as a melting pot, helping the photons to combine their energy to get to the right frequency to make it through. 

This was crazy. But it was accomplishable. Alina opened her computer, and got to work.

* * *

He reclined in the chair across from the older woman, one ankle crossed over his knee, almost regal, even in repose. Baghra wondered if her son was as deliberate about his body language in her apartment as he was in the rest of his life, or if he'd been doing it for so long that the careful, careless command was just second nature. The coffee table between them held two bowls of untouched stew and a frozen bottle of vodka with a pair of shot glasses filled to the brim. To one side, the fire blazed. The bottle of vodka sweated.

She eyed her son carefully. "It's been a while since you've visited."

"Running the military places many demands on my time."

"You meet that girl here every day."

"Alina's running an important project and I need to know how it's progressing. She gives me updates."

"Is that all she's giving you?"

He propped an elbow on the arms of the chair and rested his chin on his palm, holding her gaze with the same impassive stare as before. "It is a wonder I don't come by for dinner more often."

She snorted. He might not be planning on eating, but she had no intention of starving; she picked up her bowl of stew and took several slow bites. He watched her with a calm, calculated interest. She put the bowl down again before speaking. "The news suggests that our military isn't doing so well."

He nodded. "I'm hoping Alina can help with that."

"I don't know what you expect from that girl."

" _That girl_ is creating the most powerful solar energy system that's ever existed." 

"And what use do we have for solar power?"

He studied her carefully. "Feigned ignorance isn't any more becoming on you than I imagine it would be on me."

She frowned. It wasn't that she hadn't anticipated this, but she'd let herself hope it might be otherwise. _Foolish_. He picked up the shot glasses and handed one to her. She drank it, sighed. 

He held his own glass on the arm of the chair, traced a fingertip around the lip.  "You don't approve."

"When has my approval ever mattered?" She met his gaze, and he lifted the corners of his mouth, a gesture designed to make him look thoughtful. Human. 

"It always matters, _Madraya._ "  

The silence was heavy between them, ghosts of the past doing all the talking. He knew her too well. "They'll destroy you if you aren't careful."

He waited a moment before shooting his vodka, placing the glass quietly back on the table, and standing. "Luckily, I am careful," he said. "And I'm touched that you think there's something left to destroy."

Her heart twisted. She still saw in him the boy who hadn't had the luxury of a childhood. If he was fighting, wasn't he just doing what she had taught him to do? "I do love you."

"I know." He bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead, lips cool from the vodka. 

She poured herself another shot as he left. It didn't feel like enough.

* * *

Alina had been working almost nonstop since she had come up with the idea earlier that week. There had been some papers published recently on combining multiple lower energy photons into single higher energy ones – the work was was still experimental but promising. She'd gotten Davna up to speed on the research and had her looking into materials that would be conducive to allowing the photons to merge and recombine; it would be easiest to allow the combinations to happen randomly but Alina was worried about the inefficiencies that might introduce. She had run back to the lab the last few evenings after giving the general her update and had fallen asleep at her workstation on more than one occasion.

She was working on a simulation for what might get through to the cell given Davna's latest idea for materials so that they could see the impact of switching different parameters. It was late afternoon on a Saturday, and the lab was mostly empty. The lack of distraction was good, though she'd forgotten to eat lunch and was starting to regret it. 

Her phone buzzed with a text from Genya. _Just because I'm not there this week doesn't mean you get to skip the president's party_. 

Alina rubbed a hand across her face. With the work she'd been doing, the party hadn't even been on her radar and she had no desire at all to attend. She wanted to keep working. She texted back. _I'm not feeling well._

_I know you're working,_ Genya said, and Alina was dismayed to find that she was a terrible liar even over text. _Go and be seen. Do me proud._

Alina wanted to ignore the messages, was incredibly tempted to, but just then another one came through. Genya had sent a photo of herself, looking sternly into her phone's camera. She had added the caption: _I mean it_. 

Alina laughed. _Fine,_ she replied _, but I'm not going to dance._

_Baby steps,_ was the response. _I'll see you next week._

* * *

Alina had never sat out the entire folk dance section of the evening before. With Genya gone, Alina wouldn't have been able to adequately conceal her scar, and she'd become so reliant on having it covered that she wouldn't have ever considered lifting up her right hand to a partner otherwise. Since Genya wasn't there to convince Alina to try wearing something new, she had put on her dress uniform, shoved a few hairpins into her hair, and thought that that counted as enough to fulfill the letter, if not the spirit, of Genya's injunction.

Not dancing was surprisingly pleasant. She had had a conversation with Harshaw and had gotten a chance to explain to Zoya what she was working on. She enjoyed watching the way the lines of dancers moved towards and away from each other, the way they combined and then separated, like the was trying to get the photos to do. She yawned and rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand, forgetting she'd been wearing makeup, cursed quietly when she saw a small black smear of mascara on her palm.

The general was surrounded by a crowd, as usual, and she snuck glances at him from time to time. Once she saw him looking back at her, and she'd felt her chest beginning to heat under his gaze – it reminded her that it had been several days since they'd done anything other than discuss work. This didn't seem like a productive line of thought to have in a place where other people could see her, so she moved over to a bar and procured a glass of champagne. 

"Hi. I'm Viktor."

Alina glanced up at the man who had just introduced himself to her. He was olive-garbed, a _divizionik_. For all the evenings she'd spent at these events, she'd never spoken with any of the _divizioniki_ ; Genya's distaste for them was obvious, and Alina hadn't questioned it. She wondered now if Genya had deliberately steered her away from them, if she'd been so oblivious as to never ask why.  

But the man standing in front of her didn't seem to have anything particularly wrong with him. His hair and eyes were dark, he held an empty vodka glass in his hand. 

"Nice to meet you," she replied in Ravkan. "Alina."

Viktor laughed – not in a mean way, but it was clear that he'd caught Alina's still-thick accent – and switched to his own somewhat less accented English. "You must be the American we've been hearing so much about." He glanced at her insignia. "You're working on solar energy, right? Some division ... what's it called? Little Sun?"

"Solnyshko," Alina said, pronouncing it the same flat way she had in America, waving hand in a vaguely embarrassed apology. It had been a while since anyone had questioned the name, and now that her Ravkan was better the pretension was obvious to her. "I named it back at university." She glanced down at the name badge on Viktor's uniform, sounded it out carefully in her mind. "Vakhrov," she commented. "That's a name I recognize. Any relation to the president?" 

He smiled and raised his hands slightly, a _you caught me_ gesture. "He's my father."  

Another _divizionik_ came over, put his hand on Viktor's shoulder. This man was clearly drunk – Alina could tell that his hand functioned as equal parts camaraderie and support. " _Kto eto_?" he asked, thickly.  

"This is Alina," Viktor replied. "Alina, Boris." 

She nodded at Boris and fought the urge to take a step backwards. The look he gave her was too unguarded, too interested, for her comfort. Boris nodded back. "You should come dance," he suggested in Ravkan, apparently not catching that Viktor had answered in English. "Viktor, bring her to dance." 

Viktor put an arm around Boris' shoulders to steady him and gave Alina an apologetic look. Boris didn't notice, continued staring at Alina. "I think she wants to dance," he insisted.

What Alina wanted, at this point, was to get as far away from Boris as possible. Another _divizionik_ came over, and Viktor spoke to him over his shoulder – the second man grabbed Boris' other arm and helped him away. Boris called something back to Alina as he was being carted off, but his words were slurred and the room was noisy and Alina couldn't make out what he said. It was probably just as well.  

"Sorry about that," Viktor straightened out his jacket that Boris had pulled. "Would you like to dance, though?" 

"I'm not really dancing tonight," Alina smiled apologetically, "but thanks." 

"Come on," Viktor said, and when he smiled she caught a glimpse of something older, different in his eyes. "You can make an exception."

The music was a waltz now, so Alina wouldn't have to worry about showing her palm to everyone. Why _shouldn't_ she dance? He was being nice. 

"Sure," she said, putting down her glass on a table. "Fine."

Viktor wasn't as skilled a dancing partner as most of the ones she'd had until that point, but he led her passably through a waltz. She was more confident in her own abilities now, and even moved him through a tricky part without him realizing she'd done so. Viktor asked her a few questions about the work she was doing and she gave him some of the basics. The song ended, but when Alina made to remove her hand from Viktor's, he didn't release it. He smiled down at her. "Where are you heading off to?"

The words were innocuous enough, but the pressure on her hand had increased slightly and he moved his arm around her, pressing her into him. "The dance is over," she said, trying unsuccessfully to gracefully extricate herself.

"There will be another one soon," he said, and as he did the music began again. "We were just getting to know each other."

"I think I'd like to sit this one out." The people around them had started dancing, and Alina was struggling against his grip in earnest. He was surprisingly strong. His hand slid lower down her back and the only way for her to get away from it was to move closer to him. 

His smile now had more of an edge to it. "Not enjoying my company, Alina?" 

_Shit_. Alina glanced behind him to see if anyone she knew was around and was dismayed to find herself in a sea of olive green. No one from R &D was nearby, and the last thing she wanted to do was draw the attention of Viktor's friends when her own where nowhere to be seen. 

She took a deep breath, and then –

"Let her go."

The voice came from behind her, and Viktor's expression shifted.

" _Dzhenral_ ," Viktor replied in a tone that Alina hadn't heard anyone use with the general before. His grip didn't loosen. "I was just learning about Solnyshko," he pronounced the word as Alina had, mocking her accent. "Alina was filling me in how you've been spending our military's time." 

This was escalating quickly. She couldn't turn her head, but the anger cold radiating off the general was palpable. The people in the immediate vicinity around them had stopped dancing, and in the edge of her vision she saw Ivan making his way over. 

"Let. Her. Go."

There was a moment when Alina hoped the ground would open up and swallow her. It was only a moment, though, before her own anger flashed, and she hoped the ground would open up and swallow the two of _them_. There was no way that this fight was really about her – she was clearly a stand in for whatever was actually happening between them, and that made her furious. 

She gritted her teeth, and for a breath, no one moved. Then Viktor laughed, and released her. " _Da, Dzhenral_ ," he said, bending deeply in mockery of a bow. "As you command."  

Without moving his eyes from Viktor, the general held out a hand to her, palm down. "Alina, come." She blinked at him. Her heart was racing hard, adrenaline and anger coursing through her body, but she didn't miss that he was asking to take her hand. In public.

The people around them didn't miss it, either. There was a collective pause. "Alina," he repeated, looking at her this time. She couldn't read his expression, but put her hand into his. He curled his fingers around hers, turned and led her away.

"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed as soon as they were clear from the group of _divizioniki_. His expression was frustratingly neutral, but she saw his jaw clench.  

"Saving you from being pawed by some low-level _devizionik_ scum." Moving to position the olive-clad group in his line of sight, he put one hand around her waist and held her right hand with his other before stepping backwards in the first steps of a waltz that Alina vaguely realized was playing. She moved her feet along with his to keep from falling. 

"I was not being pawed and I'm plenty capable of saving myself." 

"Are you."

"I am." She glanced over his shoulder and saw half the room had stopped dancing and talking and was openly gawking at them. "Everyone is staring at us."

"Are they."

_Him and his fucking non-questions._ ”You're making a scene." 

He brought his eyes down to meet hers. "This is not a scene."

She flattened her lips and slit her eyes, which elicited exactly no reaction from him. "I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a scene when half the room is star –"

He kissed her, hard, moving his hand from her waist to the small of her back and splaying his fingers to push her against him. Despite the undercurrent of desire, his movements were deliberate and precise, which left Alina to conclude that this was some sort of power move — although why the second most powerful man in Ravka felt the need to play this game she wasn’t sure. She pulled her head back from his, caught her breath, and blinked twice, surprise supplanting her anger.

He kept his head tilted towards her so that she had to arch her back. His gaze was unreadable. " _Now_ this is a scene."  

It certainly was. The crowd behind the general stood, openmouthed, and Alina's stomach sunk when she saw Zoya amongst them. After a moment, the general resumed moving to the beat of the music, leading her gently, stroking the fingers of her right hand held in his in slow time to the waltz Alina was mindlessly dancing. The song came to a crescendo, then ended. There was a small smattering of applause and the general did not release her. Over his shoulder, Alina saw that the people staring at them earlier had not disbursed. Zoya's face had turned a bright red. She couldn’t watch the people watching them, so she turned back to the general. 

He was still looking at her. "I'm leaving. Are you coming with me?"

_Because why have a scene without a dramatic exit?_ Her voice was a whisper. "What are you doing?" 

"That's not an answer to my question." He had moved his hand to rest on her hip and his thumb brushed back and forth over her hipbone: part promise, part tease, part of the scene. She didn't want to play whatever game this was, but she wasn't about to stay and face everyone once the general had left. "Yes, I am."

He nodded and let go of her hip. Without releasing her hand or looking at the crowds that stood on either side, he led them across the room and out the door.

* * *

That night, Alina sat on the bed and tugged her undershirt over her head as the general stood and pulled on soft dark pants. 

“I have work to do,” he said. "You may sleep here or I can have my driver to take you to your lab."

She shook her head — he was not going to avoid the discussion completely. ”Why was it so important for you that people see us together?"

"Why was it so important for you that they not?"

"This isn't going to make my life any easier."

"I don’t make decisions based on what will make your life easier."

“So why did you do it?“

He glanced up from the shirt he held in his hands. ”Rather than sitting in my bed and questioning things I did hours ago, perhaps you should acknowledge that the evening turned out rather well for you.”

"It did," she conceded, managing not to blush, "but you're avoiding the question.“

He pulled on the shirt. “I needed to make a point.”

"What point was that?"

"That _divizioniki_ should think twice before fucking with my projects." 

Alina laughed out loud at the unexpected profanity and then thought more carefully about the rest of the sentence. "Is that what I am? Your project?"

"No."

She was treading on precarious ground and she knew it – whatever was going on between them had been left carefully undiscussed. But he had forced the issue. "Then what am I?"

He raked his eyes over her body and she just suppressed a shiver in the silence that followed. "That's the question," he said finally as he turned to leave the room. "I suppose we’ll find out soon."


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! I've been bad about updating the summary and tags so I've done both now that I have a better sense of exactly where this is going. Many thanks to everyone who has left a note here or found me on tumblr – I appreciate all the comments!

Davna was already in the lab when Alina arrived on Sunday morning, and from the looks of her workstation she'd been at work for some time.

"You’re here," Alina remarked, surprised.

"I got your emails yesterday and I realized there's an easier way to do this. I found some research that you missed." She held up a thin layer of shiny clear film. "We can make it work with this."

Alina's eyebrows shot up. "Something that thin can let the photons recombine into identical frequencies?" 

"This is the filter that will keep anything not at that frequency out. This," she picked up another film, only slightly thicker than the first, "is going to let them recombine."

Alina and Davna worked together for the rest of the day, late into the night, and resumed early in the morning. When the rest of the division had arrived on Monday morning, Alina called a meeting to discuss the progress she and Davna had made. She'd only gotten a sentence or two into her explanation before Ana interrupted her.

"First things first: what about what happened over the weekend?"

Alina blinked. "This _is_ what we were working on over the weekend."

"Saturday night," Alexei clarified.

It took Alina a moment to remember a couple nights prior, when the general had decided that kissing her in front of a ballroom full of people was a good idea. Alina herself had almost managed to forget about it; her division, apparently, hadn’t. She cleared her throat. "I hadn't realized you were there."

"We didn't have to be," Eva replied. "We read the news."

"It was in the _news_?"

"Ravka's a small country," Alexei pointed out. "You should probably assume everyone knows."

"Knows what?" Davna interjected, and Sergei rolled his eyes.

"Is that why the general gave you this team?" Ana asked, pointing her switchblade at Alina.

" _No._ " Alina's ferocity surprised even her. She corrected herself. "No. That was ... before." 

There was a moment of silence before Eva asked: "So we don't have to worry about _solnyshko_ getting defunded if something happens between the two of you?"

_Ah,_ that's _the concern_. "The general is committed to Solnyshko separately from anything to do with me," Alina replied. "Are there any other things we need to discuss before we can get back to work?" She raised her eyebrows and looked at each of them in turn.

After a moment where no one said anything, Marie shrugged. "Get it, girl."

"Thank you, Marie," Alina replied dryly before turning back to the films laid out before her. "Now, back to what Davna and I spent the weekend developing."

There was more to do. There was so much more to do.

* * *

Alina blinked, blearily, at the photovoltaic cell in front of her. She was on the roof of the building with Davna, Sergei, and Marie, trying out the films that she and Davna had been working on in conjunction with the work the other two had been doing. There was more similarity between the ideas than Alina had initially thought, and they were able to repurpose quite a bit of the work Sergei and Marie had done. This was the first practical test of their combined work, Alina felt herself beginning to sway unsteadily on the thin plastic chair.

She hadn't left the lab for more than a few hours at a time since she'd arrived on Sunday morning. She had been attending her Ravkan lessons but had begged off of updating the general, reassuring him that she'd have something to show soon. She slept a few hours each night in her bed and tried to shower before coming back to the lab, although, now that she was thinking about it, it's possible she hadn't showered every day. 

Or most days. She'd definitely showered this week though. 

Right?

Her vision started blurring and she shook herself awake. _Focus, Alina_. _If this test goes well you can get all the sleep you want_. 

She wasn't sure how Davna managed to look as unperturbed as usual despite keeping the same hours as Alina. Sergei and Marie cast each other yet another nervous glance.

"I can just text you the results," Marie offered for the fourth time. "If you want to get some sleep or something."

"I'm fine," Alina intoned, hoping that if she said it enough it would be true. Everything she'd been working towards was so close, _so_ close –

Sergei's computer beeped, and he and Marie rushed over to look at the output on the screen. Marie let out a burst of laughter before covering her mouth with her hand. Alina rushed over and read over their shoulders. It took her a moment to make sense of the output.

_It's working. It's_ working _._ Alina was suddenly wide awake. 

"Again." She smiled and Marie and Sergei's eyes sparkled back at her. "Do it again."

* * *

Alina nodded at Ivan and Fedyor; they nodded back and opened the door to the general's office. 

He stood behind his desk, a stack of manilla folders to one side, phone held lightly to his ear. He motioned for her to sit but she remained standing, papers clutched in her hands. She'd stopped to shower before coming here, letting Marie and Sergei use that time to write the results into the report she now held. She fidgeted, her tiredness from earlier in the afternoon replaced by nervous excitement.

After minute of ambiguous statements in Ravkan, the general hung up the phone and turned his gaze towards her. "Show me." 

She shoved the papers across the desk towards him. He looked down at them, reading in silence for a moment before speaking. "You discovered a way to get photons to combine to the same energy level."

"I did more than that." 

He kept reading, flipped to the next page. She examined his face closely, thought she saw his expression tighten. He looked at the last page carefully. Lifted it, read it. Read it again. He spoke slowly. "You tested it and got the results you wanted." 

She smiled. "I did more than that, too." He was still looking at the paper and she walked around the desk towards him, stood in front of him. All he had to do was look up. "I've made the best fucking photovoltaic cells in the world."

When he raised his eyes to hers, it was only for a moment, just long enough to give her a head start if she'd been thinking of running. She smiled. The next instant the paper was crushed between them, his lips on hers, fingers tearing at her uniform. Her own excitement was a match for his and then some; the sensation of his hands on her body after days in the lab combined with her lack of sleep and went straight to her head. It wasn't until they were both shirtless and he had her against the wall, perched on a low cabinet, that her brain began to process something else.

She broke away from the kiss, struggling to keep her voice steady as he bit her collarbone. "What if someone comes in?" 

He didn't pause undressing her, spoke with his mouth pressed against her skin. "If anyone gets past the guards, we have larger problems."

_The guards._ "They'll hear us." He made a noncommittal sound as he threw her bra onto the floor behind him. "If they tell anyone ..." Alina had a horrible moment in which she envisioned Ivan telling Genya what he had heard through the door. She blushed immediately and furiously enough that the general laughed against the skin of her stomach as he unbuttoned her pants and then lifted her slightly, divesting her of them completely. 

"They wouldn't be my guards if they talked, Alina."

She thought about protesting, but then his mouth returned to her body and she bit her lower lip hard to stifle a gasp. She'd just moan quietly, she decided. The guards had undoubtedly heard worse.

Afterwards, while her pulse was still racing, she let out a ragged breath. His forehead was pressed against the wall next to where the back of her head rested, the fingers of one hand dug into her bare hip. "That was," she observed, "a very enthusiastic reception to photon combination."

His soft exhale of amusement brushed her ear. "It's starting to seem like you might be worth the trouble, after all."

"You consider this trouble?"

"Not the sex specifically, no." He glanced at her and registered her expression before closing his eyes again. "Resigning my position as ambassador and taking over the military to ensure that the project goes smoothly, though, was a considerable amount of trouble." He pushed off the wall and released her, finding and pulling on his pants.

"You're doing all this for me?" 

She batted her eyelashes at him jokingly, but he just raised an eyebrow in response and tossed her a few articles of clothing. "I'm doing this for Ravka." 

She sighed as she worked her way back into her shirt. "Has anyone ever told you you're incredibly romantic?"

"I imagine you know the answer to that." He picked and up pulled his own undershirt over his head, then looked at her, gaze direct, meaningful. "Don't get too comfortable, Alina." 

"Was that a joke?" The cabinet she had been sitting on was anything but comfortable, and he lifted a corner of his lips in acknowledgement of the potential double meaning before shaking his head slightly, returning to his seat at the desk and picking the crumpled printout of the results back up.

"No," he said, reading the last page yet again, his brow lightly furrowed. Any hint of the earlier passion was completely gone. He examined the graphs carefully, then rubbed a hand over his face. "There's still a lot left to do."

* * *

_Pic from where you are?_

Alina had been scrolling through results on her screen and the buzz of her phone startled her out of her stupor. She rubbed her eyes and took a sip of her coffee, wincing as she realized it had passed tepid hours ago. The sun had long since set and she was nearly alone in the lab. She ran her fingers through her hair and replied to Nikolai's text with a photo of her at her workstation.

_You're still working?? It's nearly 2 am there!_

Alina rolled her eyes. _You're supposed to reply with a photo from where YOU are, remember?_

_Can't. Cabinet meeting, classified. These things are excruciating, by the way._ Alina shook her head and went to refill her coffee. By the time she returned, she had another text waiting: _sooooo new boyfriend?_

She blinked. _Are you stalking me?_

_If getting a daily summary of Ravkan news counts as stalking, guilty as charged._ A few minutes passed. _I still miss you._

Alina smiled as she closed her laptop and put it in her bag. She could work from her bed for the rest of the night. Maybe get some sleep, even. _I miss you, too_.

* * *

Davna had been showing Alina the work she'd done to draw electrons out to the edges of the cell using the current technique Ana had come up with. She'd made a lot of progress, but there was some potential for interactions with the work that Sergei and Marie had done, so the five of them were trying to talk through exactly what needed to happen.

Someone a few workstations down from them gasped. From the far end of the lab she heard someone yell in Ravkan. "The foreign minister –" and then a word Alina didn't know.

Everyone was talking at once. Alina ran to Harshaw. "What? What happened?"

Harshaw was pulling up the news on his computer. "The foreign minister's been assassinated."

Alina's stomach dropped. "What? How?"

He scanned the page quickly. "It looks like she was shot when the Ravkan entourage was heading to the airport."

_The entourage_. "Oh, God." Genya was supposed to be returning with the foreign minister today; when Alina dialed her number it went straight to voicemail. She tried again, same result. She tried to ignore the tightening in her chest as she texted her friend: _Call me!!!_

The whole lab was talking, and people began to crowd behind her to see the news on Harshaw's screen. She detached herself from the group, managed to make it to a corner of the room before sinking down, nauseated. Her hands were trembling as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contact list. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and rested her head against the wall. 

The general answered before the second ring. She heard voices in the background, people arguing in Ravkan. They cut off abruptly.

"Yes." 

Alina swallowed. "I saw the news," she whispered. "Have you heard from Genya?"

"No." 

She paused, passing a trembling hand over her eyes. "Do you have a way to find out that she's okay?"

"We're working on reestablishing contact with our people there now." 

The voices in the background had started up again, quietly at first, but now were shouting. She caught a couple of words and then blushed, realizing he must be with a group of advisors. Of course he would be needed to figure out strategy in the wake of this. "You're in a meeting." 

"Yes." 

She blinked. She wanted to keep him on the other end of the line, wanted to keep the connection to the only person who might be able to do something to save her friend. "I should let you go."

"She'll be fine, Alina. She's survived worse."

"Sure." Her faked confidence didn't sound convincing, even to herself.

She spent the rest of the morning sitting on the edge of the crowd around Harshaw's workstation, chewing her thumbnail into oblivion, checking her phone every minute to make sure it was working and that she hadn't missed a text from Genya. 

She hadn't.

News came in slowly and was filtered back to her though a series of Ravkan exclamations and English profanities. There were rumors that the Fjerdans had used a bomb, that the motorcade had been demolished, but those were quickly contradicted by a news report claiming that it had been the work of a sniper. Opposing theories flew back and forth, the entire R&D division engaged in progressively louder discussions as Alina tried not to vomit. _Genya's survived worse. And who would target the wardrobe designer anyway?_

The first real update made their way to them a couple hours after a lunch that no one felt like eating. There was a quick intake of breath followed by a low "oh _shit_ " and a loud sharp laugh. 

"What?" Alina stood, pushing her way towards the screen. "What happened?" 

Harshaw was streaming a close-captioned news program, the camera panning across what appeared to have been a building. There was rubble, lots of it, and in the middle of it – oh, _God_ , was that a child’s blanket? He gave her half a smile, pointed to the screen. "That was _their_ foreign minister's residence." 

The tone of the murmurs in the lab shifted, and Alina realized that she was hardly the only one in Ravka who felt better at the idea of revenge. But two assassinations, back to back ...

_This is the beginning of a war_ , she realized. Just as quickly it was followed by another thought: _Haven't we_ been _at war?_

She sank back down into to her chair, head in her hands. Waiting. All she could do was wait.

* * *

_"Genya."_

_"Our flight leaves in twenty minutes. The president's issued a curfew so we should be able to take off without a problem."_

_"How was it."_

_"About as expected."_

_"Good. Be sure to find Alina when you get back. She's worried about you."_

A beat. _"I'll find her."_

* * *

To her credit, Zoya had insisted that everyone leave the lab for dinner, and _that means everyone, Starkov_. Alina poked at her herring and ate a few small bites of bread, sitting in the middle of the R &D division but feeling more alone than she had since she'd arrived in Ravka. Harshaw gave her a reassuring smile and she attempted to return it before looking back down at her plate.

Then there was a glimpse of white fabric and red hair from across the room. Alina wasn't aware of standing up from the table suddenly, didn't even realize she was running until her arms were already around Genya's waist and her face was buried in her friend's hair. Genya's arms wrapped back around her and rocked her gently as Alina began to sob.

"Hey, it's okay," Genya cooed. "I'm back, it's okay."

"I didn't know," Alina cried. "I didn't know where you were! If you were –" She broke off the sentence as her voice cracked. The people around them politely looked away.

"They lock down communications after something like that. It makes us less of an obvious target. It's okay, Alina. It's okay. Come on, let's get out of here."

When they got to Alina’s room, Genya took one look around before turning back to Alina and giving her a hard look. "I don't know what you've been doing when I was gone, but you clearly weren't taking care of yourself." There were half-full coffee cups scattered on every available surface, and it was obvious that the bed had been used more for referencing textbooks and journals than actually sleeping. "Take a shower and then you are going straight to bed."

Alina gave a weak laugh. "I'm not the one who was almost killed today. I'm pretty sure _I_ should be taking care of _you_."

"I wasn't almost killed," Genya replied. "And I'm not the one who is badly in need of a shower." 

By the time Alina came out of the shower, Genya had made the room presentable again. Alina was suddenly embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, pulling on sweatpants and a t-shirt. 

"For what?"

"For ..." she gestured to herself. "For losing it. For worrying so much."

"Alina." Genya's voice was soft, and when Alina looked up at her friend, there was something in her expression she couldn't quite name. "It's been so long since I've had someone who worried about me." It wasn't pleasure in Genya's voice, exactly. Surprise, maybe.

"Will you stay?" Alina felt silly as she was asking it. She hadn't had the opportunity to invite friends over growing up in a group home, and was unsure what exactly the protocol was.

But Genya smiled. "Of course." 

Alina thought it would take forever to fall asleep, but with the warmth of Genya's body in her small bed she was relaxed and sleeping deeply within seconds. And when she woke up in the night, heart racing in a blind panic, she looked over at Genya's face, slack from sleep, and was able to convince herself that things were okay.

At least for the moment.

* * *

The party at the president's mansion that weekend began more subdued than usual. Alina hadn’t wanted to go, but Genya wasn’t hearing any of it.  "If we let Fjerda take away our parties, what do we have?"

Alina had frowned. "You're not seriously making the _if we don't celebrate the terrorists win_ argument, are you?"

"Depends. Will that convince you to go?"

Alina had sighed loudly but ultimately acquiesced. As the evening progressed, the dancing picked up, and eventually people were beginning to seem like they were actually enjoying themselves. Alina was in the middle of a discussion with Harshaw when the orchestra started began again. She was feeling much more relaxed now that she'd managed to convince herself that Genya was really back and wasn't going anywhere. She turned to Harshaw. "Care to dance?"

He laughed. "I think I'd better not."

"I'm not _that_ bad a dancer," she teased.

"You've become a fine dancer," he acknowledged. When he saw that wasn't enough of an answer for her, he gave a pained smile and spread his fingers. "I just ... like my job."

It took her a moment to understand his meaning, but as soon as she did her cheeks burned. "It's not like that," she mumbled. 

"Are you willing to bet my career on it?" he replied gently. She sighed, letting her gaze pass over the crowd until she found the general, looking right at them. At that moment, she was willing to bet very little. 

"I hate to make you dance more with Zoya," she equivocated.

"There are plenty of partners," Harshaw said dismissively, waving towards another person from R&D across the room and heading in that direction. "I'll see you later in the evening."

Alina bit the inside of her cheek, considering, before making her way over towards where the general stood. The crowd let her though and, with a wave of his hand as she approached, dispersed. He lowered his head towards her, brushing the fingers of one hand across her shoulder and down her back. _Deliberate_. "How are you doing."

They hadn't spoken since Genya had returned, Alina refusing to leave Genya's side until just now. It had, she was sure, been a busy couple days for him as well. She searched his eyes, unsure if she'd find concern or the same mask he always wore. There was a tension there, something in between. "I'm surviving." 

"Good." He took her hand, led her into a dance, and they spent several minutes moving silently with the music. She'd come to him seeking revenge the month before, and there was some reassurance in being held by the hands that had exacted that revenge. She wondered how the rest of Ravka was feeling in the wake of the assassination, if they were looking to him now for the same thing. If the same hands were responsible for the retaliation against the Fjerdan foreign minister.

The song ended and he bent his head towards her, pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The expression on his face was unreadable. "Sometimes surviving is the most important thing we can do." 

* * *

The event where Solnyshko would be prototyped was four weeks out and she'd been working nearly every waking minute, seeing Genya only when her friend brought meals that Alina would have otherwise missed. This evening she was in the general's office, being grilled on the details of Solnyshko and becoming increasingly exasperated.

"Sitting here is not going to get this project finished," she snapped.

"I need to understand where you’re likely to run into problems."

"Every minute I spend explaining that to you is a minute I'm _not_ spending _solving_ those problems."

His jaw tensed. "Then finish showing me what you've done today so you can get back to work."

"Finish reading the diagrams yourself!" She shoved herself to her feet and started towards the door.

"Sit down, Alina."

"No. I'm going back to the lab."

"Sit down." 

Something in his voice made her turn around. His posture was relaxed but his eyes were steel. Most people were afraid of him – and there were times when she was, too, if she was honest with herself – but she had never seen him look so dangerous as at that moment. She summoned the rest of her nerve and forced her tone to be light, despite the sharpened edge of his gaze. "Ever consider asking nicely?"

His voice was ice. "It's. An. Order."

The last of her courage vanished. She moved back to the chair and sat, blinking.

He stared hard at her for several seconds. Then his jaw relaxed and his expression shifted, the danger replaced by impassiveness. The ease of the transition scared her even more. 

"From now on, I'll stick to questions that can be answered in the time it takes to return you to your lab after your lesson."

Alina recognized the peace offering. She looked down, relief and shame mixing with the passing of adrenaline. " _Da, Dzhenral_."

After a moment, he opened a drawer in his desk and reached into it. He rested his elbow on the desk and held out a box in his fingers. 

"What's that?"

"It's for you." She eyed the box suspiciously. It was about the size of his palm, light. The outside was a polished maroon. "Open it."

She took the box from him and lifted the lid. Inside was a gold bracelet in the eclipse symbol of her division — the solid outline of a circle with more weight to one side. It lay on black velvet. 

"It's beautiful." He took the bracelet from the box and clasped it around her left wrist. It was a snug fit, and the hinge was nearly invisible. "What's it for?"

"Your birthday."

She raised an eyebrow. "My birthday isn't for another month."

He studied her for a minute before lifting the top manilla folder on his desk and holding it out to her. "The rest of your present, then, if you want it."

Alina's heart beat quickly as she took the folder from him. She opened her mouth to ask what it was, but the dryness of her throat told her she already knew. 

"The records were all destroyed. The rebels — " Her voice failed. She stared at the unopened folder in her hands.

"The rebels destroyed the documentation in the villages in Dva Stolba when they attacked, but they weren't the only ones attacking. Fjerda and Shu Han both used the rebel massacres in conjunction with and as cover for their own; the rebels needed manpower and made promises to our neighbors in exchange for their help. You said you were found in a church." Alina nodded weakly. "The rebels rarely left buildings in tact, and never churches. The Fjerdans, though, are somewhat more superstitious." He exhaled and leaned back. "There was one village in Dva Stolba that had a church standing at the end of that week. Those documents made it through."

Her head spun. She was suddenly cold. "There must have been lots of babies, though."

"A couple dozen. Slightly over half were boys. The other girls of the right age were ... accounted for." Her stomach flipped.

"Do I have any surviving relatives?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

"No."

When she opened the folder, she clasped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. The front pages were documents about her parents with official government ID photos, and they _looked_ like her – she recognized the slope of her mother's jaw and the set of her father's eyes, the color of his hair. Her mother's hair was lighter than hers – dyed, maybe? Katya and Kirill Bessmertny. Their birthdates made them five or six years older than she was now at the time they died, about the same age as the general.

She turned the pages carefully, past the ID forms of both parents, records from their military service. The last page was a birth certificate, a small footprint decorating the bottom corner. The child listed on the certificate turned twenty-three today – Kuya Bessmertny. That was her. 

She closed the folder, ran her palm lightly along the cover. This changed everything. It was something she never thought she'd have – knowledge of who she had been originally, who her parents had been, where she came from. And now that she did ... 

"If my parents weren't killed by the rebels," she said, working to keep her voice steady, "then the people who did it are still alive." 

"Likely," the general acknowledged. The fire in her stomach that she had quenched by convincing herself revenge had been served roared back to life. "Right now though, you need to focus." When she looked up, she saw he'd dropped the blank, expectant face he so often wore. There was something tense, controlled, something holding back the part of him that wanted to consume her.

"Get us past the prototype event, Alina," and the tension in his voice and the sound of her name – one of her names – made her shiver. "And I promise you Fjerda will pay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus we have paved the way for chapter 13, in which Shit Goes Down.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter _thirteen_ people. And it's a long one, so take a deep breath.
> 
> Okay.
> 
> Ready?
> 
> Go.

September in Ravka was solidly into the no-longer-summer territory – the days were shorter and the nights carried a crisp coolness that had been noticeably missing from the previous few months. Alina had taken to wearing a jacket when she left her lab at night, occasionally even taking the underground tunnels when she'd misestimated the temperature. But the slight nip in no way justified the roaring fire in Baghra's apartment.

The fire had continued all summer unabated, but now Baghra seemed to be doubling down on the flames as if they could single handedly keep winter at bay. Alina's lessons had been uncomfortable before; now the sweat streamed down her back, soaking her uniform.

She was practicing the speech she would give in a few weeks, rehearsing over and over again. The speech had been carefully crafted, revised and rewritten until it contained nothing more than empty platitudes. Alina was frustrated at the content, had argued with the general about it more than once, but had never gotten more than a "Politics, Alina," in reply. She hated the speech nearly as much as she hated that Baghra continually interrupted her to correct her pronunciation or emphasis. Despite her lack of enthusiasm for the content, Alina was trying hard – trying to have the speech down perfectly, trying to get the prototype ready, trying to focus.

Trying not to think about the fact that the Fjerdans killed her parents.

That was a hard thing to do right now in Ravka. There was an undercurrent of murmur about an emergent war between the two countries and the tensions were obvious in people's faces and in the headlines she painstakingly read each morning. Her schedule left almost no time for her to sit and think, a fact which was as deliberate as it was a relief. Because if she started thinking ...

_I promise you Fjerda will pay._

No. Not right now. She put the general's words and the thoughts of her parents' photographs out of her mind, focused on the paper in front of her, attempting through sheer force of will to get her tongue to curl correctly around the vowels. Sweat had plastered thin clump of hair to her face and she pushed it out of the way, rolling up the sleeves of her uniform as she did.

Baghra stopped a correction mid-sentence. Alina looked up and followed the older woman's gaze to her wrist.

"What is that?"

She rotated the gold eclipse around her wrist slightly, avoiding Baghra's stare. "A bracelet." The circlet was clearly real gold; there was only one person she could have gotten it from.

After a silence, her teacher exhaled sharply. "Foolish girl."

It had been a long time since she had been called foolish in any language. But before she could reply, her teacher continued: "Again, from the top."

Alina took a deep breath and started from the beginning.

* * *

"Alinaaaa _aaaaa_."

Genya was clearly starting to regret the dramatic posture she had chosen when she draped herself across Alina's workstation nearly twenty minutes ago as Alina finished up "one last thing." The position she'd ended up in didn't look easy to hold. Alina stifled a smile.

"I'm almost done," she reassured her friend.

"You keep saying that but you keep _not_ being done."

"This will be the first night this week that I'm leaving before midnight," Alina pointed out.

"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"You're _supposed_ to be nice to me. I'm under a lot of pressure to pull this off."

"Poor baby." It could have been sarcastic – would have been, if anyone else had said it – but Genya was clearly concerned about Alina. There was a warmth in her chest at the thought.

She reached out and grabbed Geyna's hand, squeezing it briefly. Genya squeezed back, maintaining her pose all the while.

"Your arm is going to get tired if you keep it flung across your face like that."

"It's already tired," Genya sighed. "Can you just hurry up?"

Alina snapped her laptop closed. "Alright, I'm done."

Genya let her arm down, relief obvious. " _Finally._ "

"What now?"

Genya eyed Alina critically for a moment. "When was the last time you slept?"

"Genya –"

"Not answering the question is its own answer. You're going to shower and then I'm going to braid your hair so that when you _wake up in the morning after having gotten some sleep_ you'll have nice waves." She grabbed a lock of her own hair and waved it in front of Alina. "Like mine."

"Sounds like a lot of fun for you," Alina commented as they headed towards the door.

Genya smiled. "We're preparing for war. I take what I can get."

* * *

Showers were when Alina struggled the most. It was the time of her day when she didn't have anything scheduled, when there wasn't a plan. The hot water ran down her body, and her mind ran wild.

It wasn't productive to want revenge like she did. She burned with the need for it, carried it like a weight around her neck. Under the stream of running water she let herself mouth the names of her parents, her own original given name, not vocalizing enough for the sound to make it even to her own ears.

_I promise you Fjerda will pay._

She hadn't spent a night at the general's house in weeks – she hadn't had the time to spare and with rumors of an upcoming war she was fairly certain he didn't, either. She satisfied herself with the way that his eyes lingered on her during their meetings, with the tension in his jaw when she spoke, the smooth surety of his words. The scar on her palm ached as she scrubbed at it.

_I promise you Fjerda will pay._

Alina turned off the water and pushed the curtain aside, gasping as the cold air hit her body and refocused her mind.

_Let the war come_ , she decided, setting her jaw as she wrung out her hair and rubbed a towel over her skin. _When it does, I'll be ready_.

* * *

The prototype event was just two weeks away. Alina had a version of Solnyshko that she thought would suffice – more than suffice – for the day itself. Davna was hard at work producing a few extra solar cells in the lab while Alina went with the rest of her team and Harshaw to find locations for the solar cells and batteries around the _divizionik_ camp.

The camp was large enough to house the hundreds of _divizioniki_ , and her own division carefully skirted the edges of the camp carefully to avoid interacting with them. This was at Ana's suggestion, but based on Alina's own experience with Viktor, she was happy to avoid them, as well.

After the fourth day of scouting her division had been able to confirm the locations for the cells and now they were hard at work installing and attaching them to the batteries. This should have been relatively simple, and progress was quick the first day, but upon returning the next morning they found that the setup had come apart. Alina redid the connections herself, tightening the wires and screws even more than she thought she needed to, but by lunchtime the connections had weakened to the point where just a fraction of the energy would be transmitted.

"What the _hell_." Alina kicked at the long length of protected wire on the ground.

"Hey, that's an expensive piece of equipment," Harshaw protested. "Be nice to it."

"If it worked I'd be plenty nice to it."

"It's working," Eva interjected. "It's just not staying put."

"It doesn't work if it doesn't stay put," Alina argued, examining the connection. The screws looked straightforward, new. Everything should be working. "Why is this coming apart?"

"It was incompetently constructed?" Ava suggested from where she was lying a few yards away, switchblade catching the sun as it flicked in between her fingers.

"It was _not_ ," snapped Harshaw.

"Incompetently set up then?" she amended, and Alina grunted her disagreement.

"Ghosts?" suggested Alexei.

Alina snorted at that as she tried to screw the wires in place again. "Any ghosts in particular you think might be trying to sabotage this project?"

"The ghosts of Keramzin," Sergei offered.

Alina's "What's that?" was nearly drowned out by Harshaw's hiss of " _Sergei_." When she looked up, the twins were deliberately not meeting her gaze, and Ana's switchblade was stilled in her hand. Marie glared at her boyfriend.

"Sergei," Alina said slowly, "what's Keramzin?"

* * *

Alina had been angry before – she had always had a short fuse and she and Mal had fought plenty towards the end. She was no stranger to the sharp snap of temper crowding the edges of her vision.

What she felt now, though, was something else completely. It stripped away any other thoughts from her mind, anything except for the one focus. She hadn't even considered what she would do if the general wasn't in his office or if his guards declined to let her in; she had no room for anything other than sheer, blinding, rage. The mixture of anger and betrayal fed hot into her body and whatever showed through on her face, Fedyor opened the door for her after only a second's hesitation. The general looked up from his desk, slate eyes empty as she stood before him.

"Keramzin," she ground out.

She might have imagined the slight twitch of his facial muscles. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair. "What about it."

"You didn't mention," she said, teeth gritted against her own anger, "that one of the villages you destroyed to stop the rebels had the region's _orphanage_."

"Your primary concern at the time wasn't the civilians."

"Don't turn this on _me_."

"Shouldn't I?" His calmness in the face of deafening anger enraged her even further. "You're only finding out about this now because you didn't bother to learn more about it before. Because you didn't _care_ , when you thought that it got the revenge that you wanted. I doubt you'd care now if you still thought the rebels were the ones who killed your parents."

" _You destroyed an orphanage._ "

"And how many children have parents who are alive today because of that?"

Alina focused through the fog. "We are not debating this. You made the call to sacrifice those villages." She breathed deeply, tried to force her voice to stop shaking. "Did you know about the orphanage when you made that decision?"

"I gave the order. It doesn't make those children more alive if I knew about them beforehand."

Alina ground her teeth, heart beating hard in her throat. "Did. You. Know."

He tilted his head slightly back onto the chair. One ankle crossed over the other knee, hands folded in his lap. He looked down at her evenly.

"No."

She glared at him and he met her gaze, unblinking. If she had been anyone else, if she hadn't spent so much time interpreting the smallest shift in his expression, she might not have recognized the look he gave her. But she had, and its meaning was clear: he was daring her to say something. Daring her to contradict him, to challenge his response.

He was daring her to point out that he'd just looked her in the eye and lied.

* * *

The sun was setting for the last time before the event. Alina had been working nonstop, shuttling at the terrifying speed of Ana's driving between the lab and the _divizionik_ camp outside of Os Alta. The setup had been complicated and the results from the tests sporadic – there had been issues with some of the cells, and Alina only just now had the confidence that all of the cells situated out there would perform as expected tomorrow.

The wiring, though, continued to be another story.

There was a long night ahead, there. The setup would work fine during the day when the sun would be out and the electricity could go straight to the needed sources or to storage. It was the evening that would be harder; they continued to run into problems getting the grid to tap into the batteries correctly, and they couldn't afford to have the solar energy fail at sunset.

Alina was leaving a Ravkan lesson where she'd had to give the speech to Baghra five times without stopping, and she was sweating for more reasons than just the fire. When she opened the door to leave, the general was in the hall, waiting.

She'd spoken to him nearly every day since she'd learned about Keramzin, had given him the updates her position required, but that's all. She'd left after his denial, some small functioning part of her brain telling her to get out of the room before she made things worse. He had lied to her – she was sure of that and furious – but that was part of the problem: so much of her anger was over being lied to. What about the orphanage? Had he been right, that she hadn't cared? Had she deliberately ignored all of the horrible things that might have gone into getting revenge for her parents' deaths?

She wasn't sure how to feel about it. He had read her indecision and had kept some space between them the past couple weeks, which she begrudgingly appreciated. She was uncomfortable around him both because of what he did and because of her own response.

And she was uncomfortable because, in spite of everything, watching him lean against a wall reading whatever was in those goddamn manilla folders elicited exactly the same reaction in her body that it always had.

She sighed and he looked up, closing the folders. "How was it."

"Baghra didn't berate me for more than a few minutes at the end, so I assume I'm doing great."

He nodded, but didn't make a motion to move from the wall. She raised her eyebrows. "Are you walking me back to the lab?"

"No."

She rubbed a hand over her face when he didn't elaborate, too tired to play games. "Then I'll see you tomor–"

"You're not going back to the lab."

She turned back to look at him, incredulous. "Excuse me?"

"You're going to bed. You need rest if you're going to give a speech."

"The speech is short and stupid. Do you have any idea how much work we have left to do?"

"Your division can take care it." She began to protest but he continued: "They're already back outside the _divizionik_ camp."

Her jaw dropped. "You can't just come in and –"

"I can, in fact. You're going to get some sleep." He gestured to his side and for the first time Alina realized Ivan was standing a few doors down at relaxed attention. "Ivan will take you to my place and see you settled."

Her eyes narrowed and she lowered her voice to a hiss. "You can't just order me into your bed."

He lifted a corner of his lips, and she wondered if he found the idea of not being able to order her to do exactly what he wanted so amusing. "I won't be joining you. The intention is for you to have a full break from work so you can come back refreshed tomorrow. Consider it a retreat."

She glanced at Ivan and the large expanse of his chest. "A mandatory retreat."

"Yes." He pushed off from the wall and walked towards her, stopping just far enough in front of her to make it clear he wasn't going to touch her. He bent his head. "You know you need rest. You also know that your division can handle this."

Alina rubbed her face with her hand again. He was right, on both counts, which annoyed her deeply. The thought of sleeping for as many as eight uninterrupted hours, though – just the desperation with which she wanted it made her want to fight against it.

"Go," he said gently, indicating Ivan with his head. "You have a big day tomorrow, Alina."

* * *

She hadn't even changed out of her uniform before crawling into the general's bed the night before, and it felt like just a moment later that she was being shaken awake.

"Rise and shine." Genya's voice drifted to her from a distance and she opened her eyes blearily before shooting up in the bed.

The sun was up, full bright.

"What time is it?" Alina cried. The event would be starting soon, and she'd lost any opportunity to verify the work from the night before with her team. The wiring would all be in use, too late to change anything that wasn't functioning properly.

"Hey, it's okay!" Genya reassured her. "You don't have to be there for a couple hours. You have time to get ready."

Alina put her head in her hands. "I need to check in with my division."

"You don't. You need to get ready." Genya looked around the room. "This place is nice."

"You've never been here?" For some reason this surprised Alina, but she blushed immediately at the look Genya gave her.

"We don't all spend a lot of time in the general's bedroom. I picked up your clothes this morning – go shower and we'll have you ready."

Alina had never showered in the general's place before; the black marble floors were surprisingly warm when she walked on them and the water came out in strong streams that pricked her skin. It felt strangely intimate to select a shampoo. The towels were large and dark and dry – he hadn't been here while she was sleeping.

Genya dried Alina's hair and pulled it back, and, despite Alina's impatience, took longer than usual to apply the makeup. ("You don't want to look overdone up close or washed out from a distance," Genya explained. "This is the hardest part.") She helped Alina into her dress uniform, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles before turning and giving Alina a chance to see how see looked.

A soldier stared out at Alina from the mirror.

The thought came into her head unbidden, and she couldn’t get it out. Genya had swept Alina’s hair back from her face, elegant but serious, clearly exposing the short collar of her dress uniform. The buttons formed a procession the left side of her blouse, and the panels of the shirt had crisp openings over her thighs, showing a carefully measured skirt. The eclipse pin was positioned to the right of the buttons, centered. The lines of the uniform were beautiful, brutal.

_I'm a soldier_ , she thought. _And I'm ready._

* * *

The day was beautiful, exceptionally pleasant even in such a mild month. That was good news for Solnyshko, good news for Alina. She squinted up at the sun through the window on the ride to the event, the rays playing across her face at their now-familiar Ravkan angle.

It was nearly noon by the time Alina and Genya arrived at the _divizionik_ camp. The barracks for the five or six hundred _divizioniki_ were positioned in a horseshoe around a field large enough to hold several times that number. Today, picnic tables laden with food and coffee dotted the field and makeshift bars were scattered between them, buckets of ice keeping beer and vodka cold.

The tables were crowded with olive-clad _divizioniki_ , and as the two of them walked through the field Alina felt increasingly conspicuous in blue.

"The president's entire division is here," she said to her friend, voice low. She was thinking back to the incident with Viktor, already on edge as they found themselves alone amidst the _divizioniki_.

"They'd never miss a party like this." Genya's tone was mild, but there was a note of bitterness beneath it. She followed Genya to a large tent, blinking several times as her vision adjusted in the dimness.

This was where everyone else was, the Ravkan political and military elite. She recognized many of the blue uniforms from R&D, and several of the higher ranking officers in the infantry and intelligence divisions as well. All the Ravkan ministers and a large section of their staff seemed to be accounted for. The women among the politicians dressed smartly in conservative summer dresses, hair tied firmly beneath decorated scarves. The men wore light suits.

Except, of course, for the one black suit in the middle of the room.

A moment later she found herself pulled to Harshaw in a hug. "You made it!"

She hugged him back. "Have you been here long?"

He shook his head. "No, Zoya, Nadia and I just arrived with Ana. Sergie, Marie, and the twins had more of a rough night, I think."

"I bet. Where are they?"

"Checking on the cells."

"Didn't they get the remote monitoring set up for the batteries?"

"It didn't make the priority list. They said it was a scramble at the end, so they'll be spending the day going back and forth to monitor." Alina frowned in response, and he shrugged. "So far, so good, they say."

"I should go find them." She felt bad about not having been around to help the day before _and_ missing the setup this morning. She glanced towards the flaps where she could see the _divizioniki_ playing kickball on a makeshift field, another group playing a game that involved throwing some sort of object at something put in the ground, too far away for her to tell any more than that. Everyone held a drink, even now – the last thing she wanted to do was wander back through a crowd of drinking _divizioniki_ , but she needed to check on Solnyshko.

"Ah, no," Harshaw corrected. "I've been instructed to instruct you that today your focus is politics. Go talk to the ministers, explain the cells." He raised his eyebrows. "Orders from the man himself."

Alina glanced over at where she'd seen the dark suit earlier, unsurprised to see the general looking back at her. Though it irritated her to admit, he was right. She rolled her shoulders and exhaled. "Fine," she said. "It's a good idea. Want to introduce me to your favorite politician?"

* * *

Politicians in Ravka skewed younger than in other countries, mostly due to the civil war having been especially brutal on anyone over a certain age. Nikolia had convinced Alina to go with him to a few political events in the United States, and she knew from those that politicians were a clever and charming group. In that, politicians in Ravka were no different. The hours passed quickly, the politicians more than capable of carrying on conversations with little participation on her part. She spoke at length with the transportation minister she'd met on her first night in the country, who introduced her to several of the other ministers, including Anasasia Zhuravlev, the new foreign minister.

The woman must have seen Alina's expression change, because she smiled as she shook Alina's hand. "You think I'm crazy."

"No," Alina stuttered, embarrassed because she did, in fact, think that. All of the last six foreign ministers had been assassinated.

"I have faith," Anasasia explained, "that things are going to change."

"Minister Zhuravlev."

Alina groaned inwardly, careful to not let her expression change. The general stood beside her, far enough to not be touching but not so far that that would be apparent to anyone else.

" _Dzhenral_ ," Anastasia nodded. "I'm looking forward to working with you from this side of things." Then, to Alina: "The general just assisted with my transition from Major to minister."

"How nice of him." Alina smiled mildly as the minister waved to someone on the other side of the tent, excusing herself.

Alina turned towards the general, letting a measure of her displeasure show. His eyes searched her face.

"You look refreshed," he commented.

"And you look like you didn't get much sleep." It wasn't true – his face had the same calm beauty it always did, but despite having slept quite well she was still annoyed that she hadn't been here to help her team.

"I didn't. We make sacrifices, though." His gaze made the meaning clear, but she wasn't ready to make anything easy for him.

"For Ravka, of course," she replied dryly.

"For Ravka," he repeated, matching her tone. Then, changing the topic: "Have you wished the president a happy birthday yet?"

Alina blinked. She realized that she hadn't ever learned what the celebration was actually for. "Er, no. _Dzhenral_."

His lips twitched upward. "He's been out with his division most of the day, but you'll have a chance momentarily. The speeches should begin soon. Make your way to the stage when they do."

She nodded and he left her alone. She squinted up at the bulbs, realizing for the first time that they were a different type than she'd assumed, one that would use far more energy than they'd budgeted for. She didn't know how long the tent would be in use – it could potentially be all night – so she started doing the mental math of what different scenarios might mean for the power supply.

" _Relax_." Alina was startled out of her calculations by Genya’s voice.

"I am relaxed."

Genya laughed. "I'm not an idiot, Alina. You’re worrying about _solnyshko_. It’s doing great."

"Of course it’s doing great while the sun’s out. But if any of the cells runs into an issue –"

"They won’t."

She sighed and leaned into Genya as the red-haired woman looped an arm around her shoulder. Alina glanced at her friend. "You're not drinking?"

"I don't drink when I'm working." Alina opened her mouth to ask a question just as the speakers began blaring music. Genya smiled and pressed forward on Alina's back. "It's time. You'll do great."

The music was painfully loud to Alina's ears as she approached the stage, but the president in the audience was seemingly unphased by it. The general seemed similarly unperturbed, but he had destroyed an orphanage and lied to her about it; she didn’t think that a little noise would be the thing to make him flinch.

_Later, Alina. Focus._

She wasn't first to speak; there were poems read in honor of the president's birthday and his wife gave a short tribute. Alina barely listened, rehearsing her own words over in her head. When the time came, she stepped onto the stage and looked at the crowd. The politicians and officers stared back at her. Beyond the tent there were _divizioniki_ playing games, drinking. The president, for all that this party was in his honor, looked very much like he wished he was with his division instead.

" 'After the war," she spoke into the microphone, beginning with old Ravkan saying, "the sun will shine into our yard, too.' " She glanced around at the audience. "For the first time, we're ready for it."

The speech was short. She looked at the paper occasionally for reassurance, but she'd practiced so many times that she knew it by heart even if the words tripped slightly coming off her tongue. She moved from the lines about the bravery of Ravka and harnessing the power of the sun to the rising of the people into divisions like this one, the courage of the president for leading the way – all these things, carefully crafted to be exactly what the crowd wanted to hear.

She finished to applause somewhat more enthusiastic than she'd anticipated, sketching a slight bow before stepping off the stage and exhaling. One of the politicians she'd met earlier shook her hand. "Great speech."

"You're looking for any opportunity to bring in more photovoltaic cells now, right?"

He laughed and clapped her on the back. She made her way through the crowd until she spotted Zoya talking with her division in a corner.

"Your accent is terrible," Zoya announced.

"It would have been much better if you had given the speech, _Leytenant_ ," Alina agreed. "Except that _I'm_ the one running the project."

Zoya frowned, but didn't touch her eyes. For all the cutting remarks Zoya slung her way, there was a part of Alina that thought Nazyalensky was beginning to like her. Respect her, at least.

She'd take what she could get.

"Nicely done," Alexei shouted over the music.

Harshaw joined them, shots of vodka arranged carefully between his fingers. He passed them around before raising his glass and shouting, "To _solnyshko_!" They cheered, clinked glasses, and shot the vodka. Alina coughed only a little.

Harshaw wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before turning back to her. "Alright, we're out."

"You're leaving?"

"We’ve been given an order to go," he explained.

"What about the cells? How are we going to make sure they're working?"

"They're doing fine," Eva reassured her. "Everything's set up for the evening. We really do have to go, though." She glanced over her shoulder. "And if I were you I wouldn’t want to stay here too much longer, either."

The tent was beginning to empty out already, politicians apparently simultaneously deciding that they'd put in the necessary appearance and that it was time to depart. Past them, the _divizioniki_ clearly had no intention of leaving and looked to be increasingly inebriated. One fight had already broken out.

Alina gave a smile that she hoped looked more confident than she felt. "I'll be fine."

She and Genya stood near the center of the crowd for the next hour, making small talk with the departing politicians. The transportation minister gave Alina her phone number, promising to get in touch with her about using solar energy to power vehicles in the more remote parts of Ravka. As the minister left, the general approached her.

"We're leaving now."

Alina looked out past the mostly empty tent, the _divizioniki_ now all clearly drunk. There was nothing here for her if the general and Genya left and he knew that, but she wasn't ready to accompany him back. He had left some distance between them, making her wonder if he was as uncertain in the next steps as her.

Unlikely.

"I might stay a bit longer," she replied.

"I wasn't asking." She bristled and he dipped his head, continued more gently. "Get in the car, Alina."

She glanced at him. His face was calm, impassive, but there was something else there, too. She looked back to the crowd for a minute to make a point, to not be too eager to follow an order, before she turned and walked ahead of him, briskly, to the parking lot.

When they reached the limo, she was surprised to find the president there as well. He had been telling one of his guards some sort of joke, or maybe the other way around; he was doubled over in laugher as Alina approached. Ivan opened the door and the president gave a surprised, blurry glance to the general.

"Your car?"

"My man will drive us back."

The president swayed slightly, gave a low laugh. "You don’t like my driver?"

The general’s face remained neutral. "Yours is drunk. Mine is not."

The president laughed, conceding the point, and nearly fell into the seat.

* * *

They rode back in silence, Alina seated next to the general and across from the president, their respective guards on either side. Genya stared ahead, face uncharacteristically cold. Alina didn't understand why until she looked down and saw the president's hand resting on the white fabric of Genya's thigh, slowly inching up her leg. Alarmed, Alina looked back up at her friend, who was now staring back at her.

Genya winked.

* * *

The car stopped at the president's palace and to Alina's surprise the general gestured that they should exit. The president stumbled slightly; the general grabbed his arm and helped him straighten. President Vakhrov laughed, then squeezed the general's shoulder.

"Morozova." There was – not affection, exactly, but something close – in the president's tone. A brotherhood, maybe – the result of a decade of shared secrets. An understanding.

The general's eyes were empty, but after a moment he turned the corners of his mouth upward. "After you, _Prezident_."

* * *

Alina stood by herself on a balcony off the main entrance, looking out. The president had taken Genya and his guards in one direction, and the general, omnipresent manilla folders tucked under his arms, had led his own guards down another hallway leaving Alina alone in the entryway.

She had hesitated for a moment before crossing to the large glass doors connecting the balcony and throwing them open. Now she rested her hands out to either side of her on the railing, looking out over the divizionik camp, twinkling in the distance. Some minutes later, she heard footsteps behind her, felt the general’s chest against her back. After a moment's hesitation, he rested his hands – lightly, carefully – on her wrists.

They hadn't touched in weeks and the contact and the lack of sleep had her feeling lightheaded. Before she thought about it, she tilted her head slightly, resting it against his jaw.

The sun sank lower and they stood in silence for a few minutes, letting the day and lights and everything else hang between them. There would be a time when they would need to talk, when she would confront him about his lie, but right now there was just silence and the slow light of the camp in the distance.

And then: a flash of light as the valley around the camp plunged into darkness. At first Alina thought it was a blackout, that the circuits she'd designed had shorted, but then the darkness began to spread. It devoured the camp, swallowing the light around it, consuming. Soon no lights in the valley were visible — there was only a swirling, black mass.

_No_. It made no sense. The darkness moved like nothing she'd ever seen, collapsing in upon itself even as it seemed to grow. She was frozen in place, had been the moment the first screams from the valley had made their way to the balcony. The screams of the hundreds of _divizioniki_ were panicked, desperate; there was a moment when Alina thought those screams were the worst sound she would hear in her life. Just a few seconds later, though, she realized that the silence that followed those screams was far, far worse.

_No_. Alina forced herself to breathe, inhaled in a gasp. Her voice was high pitched, on the verge of panic. "What happened? What's going on? What is that?" Then, she heard shouts behind them, a couple soft zips. Running. She began to move, tried to turn, but the general increased the pressure on her hands, holding them in place, the solid brace of his arm and chest keeping her from turning away from the sight before her or moving towards the sounds behind. She stopped struggling, heart beating hard.

Behind her, the general was still for a moment. Then he bent his head, pressing a kiss in the space above her collarbone.

"That, Alina," he murmured, "is the Shadow."

* * *

It could only have been minutes in between the time when the Shadow first began to consume the _divizionik_ camp and when the sounds behind them stopped. But it felt like an age, like her whole world had turned 180 degrees in front of her, an agonizing eon in which she was paralyzed by fear, by the general’s grip on her wrists. The bracelet dug into her skin painfully and she focused there, afraid to think too deeply about anything that was happening in front of her.

He waited another minute after the shouts behind them had turned into silence before releasing her. She wanted to run, wanted to crumple into a ball, but she was frozen in place. His hand on her shoulder turned her gently, almost tenderly. "Come," he said, and led her back into the hallway.

They were met by Ivan, who held a large gun pointed towards the ground and nodded in response to an unspoken question. He led them down a corridor and Alina’s feet carried her numbly. She stumbled once and looked down to see that she’d tripped over a boot. _What is a boot doing in the middle of the hallway?_ It took her a moment to realize that there was a foot inside the boot, and that it was attached to a leg –

The general pressed his long fingers to one side of her face, turning her away from the body, and increased the pressure slightly on her back to continue the march down the hall. She didn’t look down for the rest of the journey.

Ivan opened a large door and crossed the office to another door open behind it. When they entered, Alina saw Genya standing with her back to them, and the rush of relief at her friend being alive nearly crumpled her to the floor. Then Genya turned towards them, and Alina froze again.

Her pristine white outfit had blood spattered in a bright red sash from shoulder to hip. Her whole body was shaking, part of her hair undone in a way Alina had never seen her before. Alina opened her mouth and took a step forward to comfort her friend, but when Genya’s eyes met hers –

Genya wasn’t shaking in _fear_. She was _furious_.

_Prezident_ Vakhrov lay on the ground in front of Genya, his neck the center of a pool of blood. The space underneath one side of his jaw was a deep, open gash, and the other was punctured by a thin, long object covered in blood.

It took her a moment to recognize the hairpin. She shut her eyes. _No_.

The silence was broken by the general’s observation. "You’re not usually this messy."

"It’s not usually this personal," Genya replied, voice shaking with disgust.

"We’ve cleared this wing, _Dzhenral_ ," Fedyor said. Alina opened her eyes, surprised she hadn’t noticed him before. She hadn’t noticed that he was standing between the bodies of two of the president’s guards, either.

But apparently there had been a lot of things she hadn’t noticed before.

"And the rest of the building?"

"Working on it," Ivan said.

A phone rang and the general pulled it out of his pocket, raising his eyebrows slightly at the screen.

"What's happening?" The strength behind Alina’s voice surprised her. Hearing herself like that made her more bold: "What the hell is going on?"

Everyone turned to look at her, almost as if they’d forgotten that she was there. The phone continued ringing.

"Fedyor, take Miss Starkov to the office. Genya and Ivan, see to the other wings. I’m going to be taking calls for the foreseeable future." He slid his thumb across the screen and answered in low Ravkan. "Minister Zhuravlev. I'm glad you called."

A moment later Alina was standing in the office, divested of her phone, doors firmly closed on either side of her. Beneath her, the earth continued to spin.

She tried the door Fedyor had locked behind him, and there was a knock in response to her rattling of the handle that let her know someone was standing guard outside. The only other door was the one she’d come in from, where the body of the president lay next to two of his guards. She pried at the unbudging windows. She cursed in a muttering breath and then louder, screaming in Ravkan as she threw a heavy paperweight at the apparently bulletproof window, ducked just before it ricocheted back at her.

She grabbed another paperweight and, as she did, her hand paused in mid-air over a stack of manilla folders. She looked at them, then around the room. There was no mistaking the general’s signature paperwork and she wanted answers, didn’t she?

She flipped the cover of the first one, peered down at the papers, confirmed that the notes in the margins were his small, cramped handwriting.

She read the first paragraph of the page, and gasped.

* * *

Alina's adoptive parents had died when she was eight.

There hadn't been any warning; it wasn't the result of a slow disease, a predictable decline. One morning they were there, smiling over cereal, and that evening they were not.

Her memories from the next couple days were brief flashes, even now: a rawness in her throat that must have been from screaming, a series of meaningless sentiments from well-meaning adults who were not her parents. Staring at a doorway, waiting for her parents to come through and explain the mistake.

In the end, it only took three days. It only took three days for her to nearly break, for her mind to respond by constructing a wall so strong and so high around the damaged part of her that she couldn't get there even if she wanted. The pain was separated, isolated, different from herself. In just three days.

On the fourth day after her parents' deaths, she was back in school. Resilient was the word she heard teachers whisper to each other. She knew the word, and that was how she came to learn how little adults understand about the world.

Ever since then, she'd been putting anything too uncomfortable to deal with right in that spot, lobbing it over a fence into a place where she wouldn't have to think about it again, couldn't even if she wanted to. She could turn her back on those thoughts and focus on her school work, on Solnyshko, obsess over revenge. Perhaps she thought when she remembered her parents' memories that the wall had crumbled, that she had been made whole again, undamaged.

She had been wrong.

If she hadn’t cared so much about revenge, she might have realized. If she hadn’t spent so much of her life perfecting the art of ignoring anything uncomfortable, of shunting those things off to a place that didn’t touch her consciousness, she might have noticed the things that didn’t make sense. If she hadn’t told herself that she would wait to confront the general about lying about Keramzin until after the event –

_Foolish girl._

* * *

It was late into the night before the door to the office opened again. Alina had long since read through all of the papers in the manilla folders and cried until she ran out of energy. She’d been staring out the dark window, contemplating what she’d read. Hating Ravka, hating the general. Hating herself.

She had spent the last few hours like a star in its death throes, torn between exploding and collapsing in on itself. Every time she felt the wall rebuilding in her mind, trying to push what happened off to the side, she ground her teeth and destroyed it, keeping herself on the sharp edge of anger. So when the door opened and the general walked across the room, perching in front of the window in her line of sight, she was ready.

"You turned Solnyshko into a weapon."

The research papers in the manilla folders had been all theory – no one had had the technology to make the sort of bomb they were discussing – but his notes in the margins had been directed and precise. As she flipped through the folders, the articles had given way to reports, diagrams of Solnyshko and how it fit into the theoretical bombs. The film that could be used to combine and redirect photons was also exceptionally good for splitting those photons in such a way that had been theorized to be able to suck apart matter. Theory, at any rate, until this evening's successful demonstration of a new class of weapon of mass destruction. _The Shadow_.

Leave the poetry to him, he’d said.

He waited a moment before replying, looking her over carefully, taking stock. He would notice the redness of her eyes and her tear-streaked face – let him. He would also notice the barely contained fury. "I did."

"You used it to _kill your own people_."

"I used it to kill the president's people. The _divizioniki_ were the only ones left at that event by the evening."

"And they were almost all there."

"Some were guarding the palace. They're not anymore." He leaned the back of his head against the window. "The president was destroying Ravka. It wasn’t as deliberate or obvious as what the rebels were doing, just more effective. Another year or two and Ravka would either be a smoking hole in the ground or Fjerda or Shu Han’s newest annexation." He saw that she looked unconvinced and he shrugged. "I get daily intelligence reports. You can trust me on that."

"Why should I trust you on _anything_?" Her voice cracked on the last word.

"You don’t have an alternative."

She gripped the armrest of the chair hard enough that her fingers burned; she focused through the pain, spoke through gritted teeth. "I want to go to the American embassy. Now."

He cocked his head slightly. She’d surprised him. _Good_.

"The embassy …" He shook his head then stood and pulled a chair in front of her. He sat and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. He looked at her carefully. "You really don't understand yet, do you?"

“I understand that you’re a tyrant who doesn’t care how many people he kills.”

"Hardly, but let’s say you were right. You've been very publicly associated with me for months. Don’t think that the Americans aren’t aware of that.”

She thought of him kissing her in a ballroom full of people, the deliberately possessive touches. Remembered Nikolai’s question. Her eyes filled with tears of anger, and she blinked them away. "I didn’t know."

He shrugged. "Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But even setting that aside, you developed a brand new weapon of mass destruction. America really doesn’t like countries like Ravka having those.”

"I didn’t know!" she screamed. "I didn’t know that’s what I was doing."

"But the Americans doesn’t know that, and either way, Alina, they won’t care. If you show up at that embassy, they will arrest you for treason. They will arrest you for war crimes. They will threaten to prosecute you for every crime that has a prayer of sticking to make sure you know that you will be in prison forever." He paused and leaned back in his chair, one side of his lips curling slightly. "And then, they’ll negotiate."

"Negotiate?"

"They’ll want to know exactly how you did it. All the details. They’ll want it for themselves and they will make you work for them. So you'll show them how to make it. You'll show them all the ways it can be exploited and how they can protect against it and how they can make sure that no one else gets their hands on it. You’ll be their slave for the rest of your life." The truth of it hit her, and she saw the satisfaction in his features as he watched her realize what this meant. "You can’t go back to America, Alina. I have burned all your bridges."

She stared very hard at her fingers clenching each other in her lap, as if focusing on that might stop everything else around her. But there was nowhere to go, nothing that could be denied by not thinking. There was no retreating back into herself anymore. She took a deep breath and pressed forward.

"How did you know it wouldn’t destroy everything?" He raised his eyebrows and she continued. "The papers, everything suggested that the photons might not stop when they’d run out of the fuel provided, that they could destroy all of Ravka. The whole world, maybe."

"It was a calculated risk."

"A calculated –" She exhaled hard, closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again. "You set it loose, and then what? Prayed?" She laughed at her own question. "I can't imagine you have much in the way of religion."

He seemed to consider the question for a moment. "War can be something like a religion."

"And that would conveniently make you a god." The bitterness in her voice sat heavy on her tongue.

"War doesn’t make gods – it makes dead people and survivors. If it makes you feel better to pray that we remain in the latter group, by all means."

She breathed carefully in the silence that followed, deliberately bringing more air than she needed into her lungs. "Now what?"

He settled forward, a tension in his eyes, "Now, for the first time in decades, Ravka has a chance. We can use the momentum to rebuild ourselves, to make sure our neighbors aren't in a position to attack us again."

Her stomach dropped. "You're going to use The Shadow on Shu Han and Fjerda."

"No, the backlash alone would could be too much for Ravka right now. We've already established ourselves as a credible threat. There are less risky ways to secure the country than wiping out our neighbors completely."

"But you considered it."

"I consider anything that could help Ravka."

She shivered, disgusted. "I'm sure it was careful consideration led to the idea of you deceiving _and_ fucking me. Or was it just a 'keep your friends close and enemies closer' strategy?"

"We're not enemies, Alina."

"Oh, we definitely are."

He looked up for a moment, thinking. "I've been ... surprised. By you."

She snorted. "The feeling's mutual."

He ignored her comment, continued in the same tone he had used before. "I'd thought – hoped – that you'd bring the missing piece, that you'd be able to figure out the part of The Shadow that had eluded us this whole time. And that, at least, I was right about." He propped his chin on his palm, examining her carefully. "I didn't expect you to be so focused."

"I couldn't have done it if I wasn't."

"I don't just mean _solnyshko_. Your devotion to the people closest to you, your division. Wanting what you want and not caring so much about the cost."

She hated herself. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You and I are more alike than I'd imagined."

"We're _nothing_ alike."

He studied her, face relaxed, gaze cold and calculating. She wondered, briefly, if he was deciding whether or not to kill her. The moment passed and he unfolded himself from where he sat and bent over her, bracing his hands next to hers, bringing their faces close.

"You’re fighting it now, but you’ll come around, eventually."

"Will I?"

"Yes." He spoke simply, confident. "You will. You’ll realize that you need to work with what you have, what you’ve been given. That there aren’t alternatives. That there’s no _deus ex machina_ here."

She laughed bitterly. "Because you don’t believe there are gods or because you don’t think their machines will stand up to yours?"

He shifted his weight forward slightly until his mouth was positioned next to her ear. "Because, Alina," he whispered, "no one is coming to save you."

And something within her snapped. She didn’t have the advantage of height or momentum, but she did have the element of surprise working in her favor; when she swung at him, that alone was almost enough to catch him off guard.

Almost.

He caught her fist when it was just an inch from his neck, his grip iron as he shifted his weight back to look at her.

"Don’t be stupid." There was more disappointment than anger in his tone.

_Foolish girl_. She hadn't thought she had any tears left until she felt one spilling down her cheek, then another, helplessness swirling within her. He let her cry for several minutes, long enough for her to get angry again.

"Let me _go_."

His features settled into their neutral mask. "Ivan's outside the door and he'll walk you to your room; if you try anything else I'll have him tie and carry you. Am I clear?"

" _Da, Dzhenral_ ," she ground out, and he straightened fully before loosening his grip. She stood, rolling her shoulders and glaring at him. "Or is there something else I should call you now? _Lider_? _Prezident_? _Diktator_?"

He gave his ghost of a smile and reached a hand toward her, tucking a hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering there for a moment. "You can call me Aleksander." She opened her mouth, too surprised to speak. Amusement curled his lips more deeply. "When you're ready."

There was a moment of silence. Then he stepped back and gestured towards the entrance, dismissing her.

_Of all the_ – She left without looking back, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

The president’s palace – the general’s palace now, she corrected herself – was a series of winding corridors. Ivan opened a door at the end of one, and ushered her in to a room that looked like two of hers stacked together, an open doorframe between them.

"Now what?" she asked. "I just sit here and wait?"

Ivan’s jaw clenched, and she had the thought that he’d been working for the general for far too long. "There are worse things than waiting," he replied finally. She looked at his face, the hard lines, and wondered if he was considering the worse things he'd done that evening. "Someone will come get you when you’re needed."

He turned to leave, and Alina shouted at his back. "He can't keep me prisoner forever!"

If anyone else had given her that look she would have described it as pity. "The general doesn't take prisoners," he said, and locked the door behind him.

Alina wandered to the back of the room and sat, staring out the window at the lightening sky. A tap of her finger told her the glass here was bulletproof, as well. After some time, she stepped out of her dress uniform and took down her hair, unhinging the gold bracelet around her wrist and leaving it on the desk. She crawled into the nearby bed and closed her eyes, exhausted but with no expectation of sleep.

Several hours later the door opened, light spilling in from the hallway. Alina cracked her eyelids just enough to see Genya walk in and head for the bathroom. A long time later, Genya emerged wrapped in a white terrycloth robe, rubbing at her wet red locks with a towel. She scrunched her nose at a smear of blood on the towel and tossed it to the side before positioning herself in the doorway between the two rooms. She turned towards where Alina lay, feigning sleep.

"Alina," she said, lifting an arm against the doorframe and resting her weight on it. "We need to talk." 


	14. Chapter 14

Even in the middle of a military coup, Genya looked stunning as she stood silhouetted in the doorway. She shook her damp hair behind her and propped one arm on the doorframe above her head. 

"Alina, we need to talk." 

Alina dropped the pretense of sleeping; Genya had apparently not been fooled anyway. But she couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice. " _Now_ you want to talk."  


"Don’t be like that." 

"Like _what_ , exactly?" Alina pushed herself up onto an elbow. "Like a person who has unwittingly participated in creating a weapon of mass destruction that she just saw used on an _entire division_? Or like a person who just realized that her best friend is an assassin?" She had put enough of the pieces together on her own, had been sorting through the implications of that one for hours.   


Genya tilted her head in disapproval. "Alina –"

"You wanted to talk," Alina continued loudly, "so tell me: did you kill _both_ foreign ministers on that trip you took? Or was it just the one?"  


Genya sighed and rubbed her face with her hand before looking at Alina again. The edges of her mouth turned down. "Just theirs," she said finally. "The Fjerdans killed our foreign minister."

"Nice of them to save you the trouble."

"I wasn’t there to kill her, Alina. Jesus."  


"Oh, just there to retaliate when the Fjerdans took the bait you’d offered? I don't think that really gives you the moral high ground."

Genya let out a breath of disbelief and crossed her arms. "We don’t all have the luxury of working in a lab and pretending that the war around us doesn’t exist."

"You can't really think the two options are being naive or being an assassin."

"This is about _survival_ , Alina."  


Alina rolled her eyes. "Let me guess – for Ravka?"

"For Ravka, yes. And also for _me_." There was a waver in her voice, and she met her friend's gaze, eyes hard and challenging.   


Alina chewed at her cheek, considering. "The president?" The look of disgust on Genya’s face confirmed the guess. Alina had spent a long time thinking about that, too – about the _divizioniki_ guards patting Genya down, the sharp hairpins and the one that found itself lodged in the president’s jugular. Her eyes narrowed but her voice softened. "Want to tell me what was happening between you?"  


Genya’s bark of laughter was unamused and bitter. "What was _happening_ between us? Sure, we can speak in euphemisms. When two people love each other very much –"  


" _Genya_ ," Alina gasped, horrified.  


"Oh, you want another version? How’s this: when there are two people and one of them is a lecherous shit who runs a country and has the power to destroy the other person's life or have her killed, he can take whatever he wants whenever he wants it _and_ _he does_." Alina’s stomach twisted and Genya snorted at the look on her face. "He probably regretted it in the end, though."  


A silence filled the space between them. When Alina spoke, it was soft: "Do you think he deserved to die?"

"He deserved his death and more." She rubbed a hand over her face. "But that wasn't why I killed him."

Alina blinked. "Why, then?"

"It was an assignment. I'm a soldier – I follow orders."

"And what if those orders had been something else?"

"They weren't." A sigh. "You aren't the only one who's lost, Alina. You're not the only orphan. If I don't handle my pain the same way you handle yours, it doesn't mean it hurts any less." She ran a hand through her still-damp hair, fingers dropping smoothly through the waves. "And if I _have_ kept things from you, it doesn't make me any less your friend."  


Alina fought tears in the silence. It was too much. Even after everything, she wanted to collapse into Genya's arms, wanted her friend back. "So what now?" Alina asked, voice shaking. "You're here on the general's orders, right? Not for me."

Genya walked towards the bed. When she reached to run a hand through Alina's hair, Alina didn't lean in but she didn't jerk away. Genya's hand cupped the back of Alina's head and she pressed their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut. 

"Don’t ask me to choose between the two of you," Genya whispered, "and I won’t have to lie to you any more." 

Tears fell from Alina’s eyes onto the sheet between them, and when Genya finally pulled away Alina could see that her own eyes were shining, too. 

"I’m going to get some sleep," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands and gesturing to the bed on the other side of the wall. "I recommend you do the same." 

* * *

Sleep came in sharp concussions interspersed with gasps of consciousness, a continuous sweat of nightmares. The day wore on outside, but behind the black of Alina's eyelids screams were cut short into silence. It was long past dark when she woke, exhausted, to the sound of the tap running in the bathroom. She left her bed and walked to the front section of the room where she saw a box of her own uniforms in the middle of the floor.

"Fedyor brought that by an hour ago," Genya explained, toothbrush in her mouth. 

Alina shoved the box with her toes, testing the weight. It must have most of her clothing. "I guess I’m going to be staying here a while, then." 

Genya finished brushing her teeth, spitting into the sink before replying. "Research and Development have been called back to their active fighting positions in the short term. It sounds like the transition is more straightforward than it could have been, but there are still some issues that need to be sorted out."

_Transition sounds so much less violent than coup._ "And let me guess: I'm supposed to stay in this room until that's over. For my own safety?"  


Her friend shrugged apologetically as she unlocked her own closet and looked through it. "You've been sleep deprived for months – you can use the time to rest."

"Not with nightmares like this." 

Genya looked up, spoke quietly. "It gets better." 

Alina snorted and sat at the desk. "Well, in that case." She watched as Genya pulled on a coat and locked the closet again. "Where are you going?"

"Work." She caught Alina's glare and rolled her eyes as she went into the bathroom and rummaged in the drawers, looking for a hair tie. "Normal work stuff, don't worry."

"I don't even know what qualifies as 'normal work stuff' for an assassin."

Genya braided her hair, fingers working quickly behind her head. "I have plenty of skills _other_ than that, you know."  


"I'm aware."

Genya left the bathroom and flicked the ceiling light on as she entered the room, kissing Alina briefly on the forehead. "Be good while I'm gone." She knocked on the door and a moment later it opened, Fedyor sticking his head in and then opening it wider.

Genya was halfway out the door when: 

"I want to go home," Alina blurted out. 

Genya back turned to her, eyes soft. "And where, exactly, do you think that is?"

* * *

After Genya left, Alina had stared out the dark window for hours, fury mounting painfully in her chest. Then fury became anger, became a simmer of rage bubbling beneath a thick layer of boredom. The was nothing to do or enjoy in the room itself: walls were white, the carpet painfully bland, and even the curtains were neither nice nor dreary. They just _were_.   


Now she sat amidst the remains of a midday meal that had been brought by a guard she didn't recognize, throwing a ball at the wall and catching it. Earlier she'd nearly rubbed her scar raw – it was far from the only wound she was picking at, but her hands, at least, she could keep busy with something else. In her search for something to distract her she’d found a round rubber ball underneath one of the beds and now was throwing it hard, letting it thump back into her hands. 

The tingle of pain felt good. That was something she could handle. 

She bounced the ball harder against the wall, an unrelenting beat. 

The lock jiggled and the door opened. Ivan stuck his head inside. " _Soveren_ Morozova will see you now."  


_Soveren._ She'd assumed he'd go with _Prezident_ , but apparently he wasn't concerned with even the pretense of having been elected.  


She bounced the ball off the wall once more, caught it. "I don't think so."

Ivan narrowed his eyes, annoyance warring with disbelief. "You want me to tell him you're not coming?"

"No, I want you to tell him that he can go fuck himself. Or you could give me my phone back and I'd be happy to do the honors."

"This isn't a joke, Alina."

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" She turned to face him. "Why do you work for him?"

Ivan began to leave and she jumped up, wedging herself in between the door and the frame. She was under no illusion that this would be problematic for him if he decided she was in the way, but she wanted to force him to make that decision. "You could work for anyone," she said. "Why him?"

"You think I should have worked for the president?" The distain in his voice didn't require explanation. 

"There are other options."

He shifted his weight until he stood directly in front of her and he held her gaze, face tight. "There aren't if I care about my country."

Alina didn't back down, even as he moved closer. "You know this isn't right," she whispered.

His eyes were dark and cold. "Nothing in my life has ever been right." 

Alina glowered at him, and he glowered back. Then he reached out a hand and pushed her – slowly, gently – clicking the door shut when she staggered backwards. She rubbed her shoulder and looked down at the scar on her palm before picking up the ball and throwing it as hard as she could at the door. 

* * *

There was no part of Alina that was surprised that Genya’s thumbprint unlocked her phone.

Genya handed it to Alina, who snorted as she scrolled through the last couple days of text messages exchanged between Nikolai and her number. "You make a convincing me." Genya had the good grace to flinch slightly.

Nikolai had texted just a few hours after the Shadow had swallowed the president's entire division and the general had claimed control of Ravka. _Tell me you're okay,_ he'd said.  


Then he said it again, and again, interspersing phone calls and profanities over the series of increasingly desperate pleas for her to get in touch. Genya had finally replied to him what seemed to be just before she'd come in to shower; the thought of Genya covered in blood and texting Nikolai from her phone was one Alina chose not to dwell on.

She read up through that morning, when it sounded like Nikolai had finally calmed down. Genya had used a number of very Alina-sounding deflections to avoid getting on the phone with him.

She looked up. "You're doing fine impersonating me on your own. What do you need my help for?" 

Genya nodded towards the phone. "Keep scrolling." 

"Why don't you just let me call him?"

"I don't think you need me to answer that question."

"Mmmm," Alina agreed, scrolling. Then she got to the bottom. "Oh."

The last text from Nikolai was a photo of an equation. It was more long than it was complicated, and could be answered by anyone careful enough to enter it into a math program on their computer. Alina lifted one side of her lips and locked the phone, handing it back to Genya. "I guess you didn't do as well impersonating me as you thought."

Genya sighed. "I was right, then. It is some sort of test."

Alina rummaged through a bowl of candies that Genya had produced and found a mint, popping it in her mouth before answering. "What do you think will happen if I don't help you?"

Genya shrugged. "Nikolai will know he hasn't been texting with you. If I were a wealthy, well-connected American boy panicking over you, I'd probably harass the American ambassador into coming to check on you personally. Maybe even take you back to the embassy for safe keeping."

"You're saying that just to scare me."

"I'm not," Genya countered. "But I think that we all benefit from Nikolai calming down." 

Alina moved the mint from side to side in her mouth, thinking. Part of her wanted to tell Nikolai everything that had happened, wanted him to send in a helicopter and get her out of there. The cost would be her freedom, once she got back to America, but she was a prisoner here, too. She could ask him to come get her. Or she could fail the test, let Nikolai know that something was _wrong_.  


But she wouldn't do any of that. There was nothing to be gained by having  the American ambassador barge through the palace.

Nikolai couldn't save her.

She had recognized the equation by just the first few expressions – it was a problem that Professor Hermann had up on the board when Alina had walked into her seminar freshman year. Even then there had been nothing hard about the math, but everyone who looked at it knew it would be a painstaking problem if she had them do it by hand. 

The class had been small and Alina had been relieved when the professor had called on the boy sitting next to her.

"Mister Lantsov," she'd said, pointing a dry erase marker at him, "can you come up and solve this problem?"

He hadn't batted an eye before replying with the most glib thing Alina had ever heard anyone say to a professor. She had laughed aloud before she thought better of it and Nikolai had turned to her and smiled – the beginning of their friendship. In the years after, they had quoted that line to each other in the lab whenever they just needed to slog through something.

Alina held out her hand and Genya pressed the phone into her palm. 

_Of course I can solve the problem,_ she texted back, _but why would I want to?_  


_And this is clearly Nikolai_ , she continued _, because no one else would try to verify MY identity by having me quote THEM._  


It buzzed again almost immediately. _Having you quote anyone else would run the risk of being boring._  
  


Then a second later: _God_ , _Alina. I'm so glad you're safe._  
  


* * *

The next day, Genya brought her a Ravkan newspaper along with a Ravkan-English dictionary. The paper was slow reading – and much of it was reading between the lines – but was at least it was something for her to _do_ other than think.   


The newspaper confirmed that the research units and reserves had been drafted back into active military positions and were currently deployed throughout the country. Alina remembered that Zoya and Harshaw had been infantry before, and as she pored over the text trying to eke out meaning she wondered where they were. Eva and Alexei would be back in a bomb squad, undoubtedly – were there mentions of bombings? Were there places where bombing might be? Were they safe?

Her heart caught in her throat when she read a short blurb about tanks, and it wasn’t until she read the article twice that she had convinced herself that there was nothing in there that indicated that Ana might have been in danger. 

Her people, her division were putting their lives on the line. And she was an unwitting weapon, trapped in a room, burning.

* * *

In the absence of anything to do, Alina tortured herself with memories. She'd replayed every second of the party at the _divizionik_ camp and the evening when the Shadow swallowed it up, had gone over the conversations she'd had since coming to Ravka from all the different angles. She had examined the particular way that the general deflected questions, Genya's silences.  


She stared out the window into a courtyard lined by trees. Beyond the courtyard she could see where the _divizionik_ camp had been. The blackness that consumed it had faded over the last couple days, and now there were just wisps swirling atop mounds of grey sand.   


Buildings and people both look a lot like grey sand when they're pulled into small enough pieces, it turns out.

She was, she'd decided, responsible. It hadn't been deliberate, obviously, but that didn't make her less culpable for the death and destruction that her work was used to create.

And that meant she had a corresponding responsibility to keep it from being used for that purpose again. Even if, in the pit of her stomach, she _wanted_ to use a weapon like this on the people who had killed her family, there would be no way to avoid collateral damage. She couldn't risk something like that.  


What _could_ she risk?   


She went into the bathroom and rummaged around the drawers until she found a metal nail file of Genya's. She went over to her friend's closet and examined the lock. 

A couple hours later, she adjusted her clothing, exhaled, and knocked on the door to her room. She knocked once, twice, and then continuously until Ivan yanked it open. He glared at her and she raised her chin, meeting his gaze. 

"I'll see the general now."

* * *

After walking through gaudily-decorated hallways Alina only vaguely recognized, Ivan opened a door to what must have been the president's office. The general sat at a table, chin resting on his palm as he looked down at the papers in front of him. Ivan stepped in behind her and closed the door. 

The general glanced up, raised his eyebrows. "I had heard you weren't interested in seeing me. Or did you come to suggest anatomical impossibilities in person?"

"I wanted to talk," Alina said. Her heart beat hard, and she glanced at Ivan, lowering her voice. "Privately."

He nodded vaguely, looking her up and down, and was silent for a moment. "Take off your clothes."

Her jaw dropped. "Absolutely not."

He sighed and her outrage was magnified by the fact that he seemed _bored_. "Take off your clothes or I will have Ivan take them off for you."  


She was certain her face was beet red as she glared at the general. He leaned back in his chair, waiting. Ivan took a step towards her but she held up a hand and he didn’t move closer. 

She didn’t have a choice. She reached for the tie of her wrap shirt and tugged on the bow string. The general indicated the center of the room with his head. "Toss it." She threw the shirt onto the floor between them. He didn’t move, and she unbuttoned the side of her skirt, fingers shaking. She let it fall around her ankles and kicked it to where her shirt lay.

She was standing in an undershirt and a slip, forced herself to hold her head high. It was a few moments before the general spoke. "Keep going."

Her mind raced furiously, but she didn’t see any other options. Ivan was standing between her and the door. She pulled off her undershirt and slip and threw them into the pile of clothing. She was standing in only her bra and underwear, and a ghost of a smile appeared on the general's face. "These, I recognize," he said. She hated him for it. "Shoes, too." 

_Fuck._ Alina, desperate, looked at the floor. "I'm not walking barefoot on this."  


"Ivan, help Miss Starkov with her shoes."

Alina clenched her jaw and kicked her shoes off. They landed approximately near her pile of clothes.

He held a hand out to the chair at the other end of the long table. "Sit."

As Alina walked to the chair, Ivan picked up the clothes from the floor and put them on the table in front of the general. The general lifted the shirt, ran his fingers along the hem. He plucked out a small knife from a hidden pocket and placed it on the table in front of him. He repeated the process with the skirt, the undershirt, and the shoes, arranging the miniature weapons in a semi-circle. 

"Now," he said, leaning back in his chair, "what was it exactly that you wanted to talk about?"

Alina felt like all the air had been forced out of her lungs. He’d known, but of course he’d known. How could she have ever thought otherwise? When she’d snuck into Genya's closet that morning the idea had seemed so perfect, so clever. It had taken her longer than she cared to admit to figure out where the weapons were hidden and how she could access them easily. She wavered in whether or not she thought she'd be able to go through with it, but whenever she thought back to those screams –

The general waved Ivan away and he retreated, closing the door behind him. She heard him settle into position just behind it.

The general picked up a dagger and held it in his fingers, turning it slowly in the light. He stood and walked towards her, perching on the edge of the table a couple feet away. "What, exactly, was your plan once you managed to kill me?" She didn't respond, so he continued. "I have guards all throughout the palace. Your odds of making it through this wouldn’t have been very good." She’d known that, of course. Her own life was the one thing she had left to risk.

“Not to mention," he added mildly, "what would happen to Ravka. What sort of succession plan did you have in mind? Did you think that democracy was going to spring fully formed from my dead body?"

She broke her silence. "Anything would be better than having you as a leader."

She jumped as he slammed the blade into the wood of the table, burying it nearly to the hilt. " _Think_ , Alina. If you killed me, Fjerda and Shu Han wouldn't wait even an hour to demolish the country. A power vacuum is the perfect time to attack and they would _destroy_ us. The only reason they haven't yet is because they're too scared they won't be able to finish the job before I turn the Shadow on them. And without me –"  


She was sick of being lectured. "They'd destroy Ravka like you destroyed the president's division, like you destroyed those villages. Like you destroyed that orphanage."

That caught him off guard. He cocked his head slightly. "You're talking about Keramzin."

"Unless there's another." She narrowed her eyes. "You lied to me, earlier. You knew about it before you gave the order."

"Did I."

"Why is _that_ the thing you won't admit to? You've deliberately killed thousands of people. I can't believe that an orphanage is the thing the you regret."  


He paused. "Killing a house full of children is difficult for any country to handle, even if it's necessary. A person who did such a thing knowingly might never be entrusted with a command again."

"So you admit you knew."

His expression was blank as always. "I admit nothing of the sort."

"You're a murderer and a monster."

"History books are full of men like me, Alina. We're the ones who change things."

She didn't answer, just glowered. One corner of his lips twitched upward. "I have to say I hadn't pegged you for a suicide mission. I would have thought that you wanted to stay around and get that revenge you keep talking about."

She crossed her arms over her bare stomach. It had taken her longer than she cared to admit to come to terms with the fact that trying to kill the general meant sacrificing her revenge. Especially if she was successful.

"We don't always get what we want," she replied. His eyes swept over her body and she snorted. "Maybe you're not familiar with the concept." 

"What I want has never been relevant."

"Oh?" She leaned back in the chair, fully on view. "Tell me more about that."

His eyes darkened and his jaw tightened. "Careful, Alina."

Now she laughed. "Of _what_? Upsetting you? You may think we're alike or tell yourself that what you're doing is _for Ravka_ , but it's nothing more than a naked power grab."   


The double meaning wasn't intentional but his jaw clenched hard and he took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. It was gratifying to see him struggling to regain control.

"If it isn't about what you want, _Soverenyi_ ," she prompted, leaning forward, "then what is it about?"   


He lowered himself to her level, face close to hers. "Watch. Your. Tone."

"I'm not afraid of you."

The look he gave her might have destroyed all the Majors in her division. But she glared right back. "Perhaps you should be."

"You've already destroyed me. There's nothing more you can do."

Her breath was steady, deliberately measured, and they glared at each other, jaws tight. In the silence the door slammed open and Genya, breathing hard, took in the scene. She put her hands on her knees to catch her breath and let out a string of Ravkan swear words that Alina had never even heard before.

A few seconds later, the general let out an short exhale and stood, brushing his suit as he did. "Take her back, Genya. And replace the lock on your closet."

* * *

Genya was furious. "What were you _thinking_?" she hissed at Alina as soon as they were out of earshot.   


"I was –"

"Don't answer that – you weren't thinking at all! You could have gotten yourself _killed_."   


It didn't escape Alina's notice that Genya didn't mention that the general could also have been killed. She wasn't sure if Genya didn't believe that Alina could have pulled it off or if it just wasn't her first concern.

"And you're not wearing any clothes!" In the shock of everything, Alina had forgotten that she was walking barefoot in just a bra and underwear. Genya pulled her sweater over her head and handed it to Alina, who put it on gratefully. 

"I'm not sorry," Alina mumbled.

" _You should be_." Genya’s lips pressed tightly together. Alina hadn’t realized it was to keep them from quivering until she spoke again. "For worrying me, if nothing else."   


At that, she first the first stab of guilt.

Back at the room, Fedyor raised an eyebrow but apparently thought better of saying anything. 

"Get in the bathtub," Genya ordered. Alina opened her mouth and Genya have her a look. " _Now_. Fedyor and I are going to fix the closet and you're going to scrub well. Who knows what you picked up walking around this place barefoot." She crinkled her nose, relaxing slightly. "You know the president used to live here, right?"  


* * *

Alina had nothing to do. 

It had been a day since her failed assassination attempt. She had come out of the bath to see the closet lock repaired – an upgraded model, she noticed. Genya had braided her hair and they'd carefully avoided discussing what had happened. Alina slept and stared out the window; her behavior had apparently not merited another newspaper. Genya came to check on Alina every couple hours, but she had a role in the new administration. Something to _do_.  


Alina did not.

She stared out the window at the grey sands in the distance, light filtering through heavy clouds. It might snow, soon. She had spent a lot of time looking at weather tables and a glance at the sky told her snow wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

She rubbed a thumb over her scar. She was helpless, here. She'd spent her last bit of currency on a gamble, and had lost. 

Beyond the bulletproof glass, the grey sands stirred in an invisible wind.

* * *

When Ivan came to take Alina to the general a few days later, she didn't protest. A change of scenery was a welcome interruption. The president’s office had been only slightly modified in the last few days – dark drapes replaced the gold ones that had adorned it previously, some of the particularly tasteless statues had been moved into a closet. Now she sat across the table from the man who had, five days earlier, murdered an entire division and the president and seized control of the country by force. He looked, as always, imperturbable. In complete control.

"You look well," he observed. 

"You look like a dictator."

Did he _smile_? "Your sense of humor has made it through the war unscathed, I see."  


"You wanted to talk, I'm here. Unarmed, even. What do you want?"

He pressed his fingertips together in front of him. "I want your help with something."

"Helping you doesn't sound very appealing." 

"It might, given the right incentives."

She raised an eyebrow. " _That_ sounds like a threat."  


"I don't make threats." 

There was a knock at the door and a guard came in, handed a note to the general who read it quickly and nodded in thanks, dismissing the guard. 

"I've had some news," he continued casually once the door closed, "from America. They seem to be displeased with the recent developments in Ravka."

The thought of never being able to go back there still burned. "I bet they are."

"They're concerned enough that they'll be sending their Secretary of State and a small entourage to discuss the events of the last week. They've made some obligatory complaints about the assassination of President Vakhrov though they never cared for him any more than I did. The thing they seem particularly interested in discussing is the Shadow. They’d like reassurances that it won’t be used again, and they would like Ravka to demonstrate a willingness to collaborate towards that end." He exhaled, letting his gaze wander to the ceiling. "The Americans, unfortunately, don't seem to trust me."

She let herself laugh. "A problem even you can't slaughter your way out of."

His gaze snapped back to hers. "I wasn’t intending to. This is, actually, where you come in."

"Oh really?"

"American authorities won't let you live freely there again – you're too dangerous. But they also want what you have, your knowledge, and you're a citizen so they don't have the option of you being easier to deal with dead. They also want reassurances that Ravka will work with them. To both those ends, their ambassador has hinted that when they show up their first request will be to extradite you." He traced a fingertip in a circle on the table. "An extradition refusal is a poor way to start a collaboration."

Alina's stomach churned. She had resigned herself to the fact that she could never return to America – it hadn't occurred to her that she might be forced to. He read her expression and leaned back in his chair. "There is a way to navigate that rather delicate situation."

"How?"

He rested his chin on a palm, looked at her carefully. "The Americans won't be able to request the extradition of my wife."

Alina blinked, then almost laughed, but his expression didn't shift. "Is this a proposal?"

"From that position you'll be able to work with them safely while reassuring them of our intentions to collaborate."

"How romantic."

"I find it hard to imagine you were expecting romance from a man you tried to kill last week."

Alina swallowed. The general leaned over and wrapped his fingers around her wrist where, until a few days ago, she'd worn the bracelet he'd given her. She fought the urge to pull her hand away. "Come balance me out for the Americans – get them on our side. It will take a few months, maybe a year. Then we can focus on building up Ravka and get the revenge you want from Fjerda."

"And then?"

He shrugged. "Up to you. You'll probably always have the option of returning to America to be tried as a traitor. You could try to get amnesty in Russia or Uganda but I doubt you'll find yourself any less of a prisoner there. Or you can stay here and protect your country and live in relative freedom."

"Married to a monster."

His grip on her wrist tightened slightly. "A monster who can give you what you want."

A thought shifted in her mind. Nothing solid – more like how Solnyshko had been initially, just a shimmer. But it was _something_ amidst the vast stretch of hopelessness. "How long do I have to consider?"  


"It will take a week to put together a wedding that passes for more than a sham and the Americans arrive in twelve days. You have until the day after tomorrow." He released her wrist and turned back to his papers. "Come back when you've made your decision."

* * *

She stared out of the window at the same view she had for the last week. But she saw something different now. 

The grey sands in the distance were bleak, to be sure, and nothing about what was happening inside her head made them any less so. But suddenly, she could see beyond them. There were mountains beyond the sand, and beyond those ...

_You want what you want, and you don’t care so much about the cost._ She’d thought about those words plenty since he’d said them. She _did_ want the things she wanted – she wanted stability for her country and revenge for her family, and she burned with the need of both. But he’d been wrong about the last part, and that was what occupied her thoughts now.  


Was there a way she could get the things she wanted at a cost she could handle?

She rubbed the scar on her palm carefully, turning the plans over in her mind. Any one part of the plan she had could go terribly, terribly wrong, but not doing anything ran that same risk. 

"What's going on with you?" Genya had asked the night before when she'd come back from whatever work she was doing. Her friend was clearly exhausted, half-dead on her feet, and that gave Alina a chance to deflect the question.

"I'm thinking."

Genya had raised her eyebrows, but left the conversation there. Alina had thought most of the night. The screams from the camp and the silence that had followed still haunted her, but she could live with them, could live with anything for a while. She wanted peace for Ravka. She wanted revenge, for both the living and the dead. And if she could get it a couple ways ... 

Maybe _keep your friends close and your enemies closer_ wasn’t such a bad strategy, after all.  


She thought, and, gradually, the fire in her stomach returned.

* * *

She walked into the general's office again. Not angry and afraid this time, nor helpless and resigned. She stood, hands on her hips, and faced him.

He stopped pacing when she entered. His eyes flicked down to the gold bracelet around her wrist and a corner of his mouth turned up. 

"I'll marry you," she announced. "But I have conditions."

He leaned back on his desk. "The options are marriage or extradition, Alina. You're not in a position to negotiate."

"Those aren’t the options." She took a couple steps towards him, looked him in the eye. "You need me."

One eyebrow arched slightly. "Is that so."

"If you surrendered me, the Americans would have everything they need and they'd destroy this country, so you have no intention of handing me over whether I marry you or not. If I don't marry you, you'll have to tell America no and Ravka will be punished – we both know who will take the blame for that. You need me at least as much as I need you. So I have conditions."

His face remained blank but he didn't disagree. "And they are?"

"The first is that we actually put Solnyshko in villages. I'll spend whatever time I can spare overseeing that; Solnyshko's not just a weapon and I'm not just a pawn in your negotiations with the Americans."

He shrugged. "Reasonable. And second?"

"I want Fjerda."

His jaw twitched. "Explain." 

"You’ve deliberately antagonized both of Ravka’s neighbors – we’re going to be fighting a war on two fronts very soon, if we’re not effectively doing it already. You can have Shu Han, you can order those troops. I want to command the war with Fjerda."

"You don’t know anything about running a military campaign."

"You’ll teach me. We’ll placate Fjerda for now, delay, do whatever we have to do. I can convince the Americans that we’re backing off on that front and they’ll talk to Fjerda – however you want to play it. Buy me time to learn. But I will give those commands."

"You’ve never fought – no one will follow you."

"They don’t have to. I make the decisions, you give the orders."

He crossed his arms. "Why do you want this."

Her lips quirked, hungry. "Because you were right – I do want revenge and _I will have it_. I will find the people who killed my parents and they will be held accountable." She exhaled, managing not to shake. "But I will do it the way I want to. I won’t kill Fjerdan civilians. I won’t turn the country into a black hole. I won’t make them pay using the moral calculus you would have used to justify the cost. You’ll teach me, but I will have the revenge I want on my own terms."  


He was silent for a minute, and when he spoke it was evenly, carefully. "There’s a reason that I was the one asked to lead the military. Wars are full of terrible choices, and the person in command is responsible for figuring out not just which is the least horrible, but which one they can live with." He paused again, briefly. "Most people can’t live with any of them."

She smiled more now: a sharp, biting thing. "Luckily, I've been told that you and I are remarkably similar. What I can live with may surprise us both."

"In exchange for giving you command over the war in Fjerda, you’ll handle the Americans?"

"And take full responsibility for the creation of the Shadow."

He looked at her, appraising, then let out a short puff of disbelief and spread his fingers. "You want the war with Fjerda – it's yours."

She exhaled. _Almost done._ Soon she’d know if this whole gamble had paid off. "One more thing."  


"On top of giving all of Ravka your solar cells and letting you command a war with a neighboring country? This is already an expensive and non-traditional dowry, Alina."

"I want you to tell me you knew about the orphanage."

His fingers tightened on the table behind him, and for a few moments he didn't move.

Then he grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him, catching her legs between his knees. He touched the tip of an index finger to her right shoulder before dragging it across her collarbone to the opposite side. When he reached that shoulder, he moved his finger in a lower line back towards the right side. "Why," he said, continuing the zig zag across her chest, "should I do that."

He moved his fingertip back and forth until the pattern ended between her breasts. He took the fingers of both hands and ran them lightly across and down her back.

She snorted. "I'm not wearing a wire."

He put his hands on her sides, and they met in the middle of her stomach. "And now we both know you're not."

"So answer my question about the orphanage."

"Why should I do that, Alina?"

"Because I am agreeing to marry you. I am agreeing be your wife." She touched her hand to his cheek, let her thumb brush his lip. He didn't move but she felt him tense at the implied promise. _Good_. "I will marry you with your dark and sordid past, but I won't let you lie to me. There will be no more secrets." His hands rested heavy on her hips. "So tell me. Did you know."  


He looked at her for a few moments, considering, before moving his hands behind her so she was pressed to his chest, his head positioned next to hers.

"I knew," he said, his voice low, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. "I knew there was an orphanage before I gave the order. I knew I was ordering the death of those children, and I knew how many there were and their ages and their names." His breath was slow, warm against her skin. "And I would give that order again."

She had him. He needed her, or maybe just wanted her – either way, his weakness gave her control. The feeling of power was new, but it wasn't unfamiliar.

She'd learned from the best, after all.

He had demons, but she had her own monsters, too; one of them had his arms wrapped around her, awaiting her response. She smiled against his neck. "Then we have a deal, Aleksander." 

His stilled for a moment before turning and pressing a kiss to the side of her head.

"I'm so glad, Alina."


	15. Chapter 15

Alina bounced the rubber ball against the bulletproof window. The grey clouds were beginning to filter the light of the setting sun, a bright spot in an otherwise bleak landscape. She was up to eighty-seven consecutive catches of the ball – harder than it sounded – when the door flung open and Genya rushed in, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her around.

Her expression was worried, maybe a little angry. Not fearful, to Alina's relief. Genya's eyes searched her face for several piercing seconds before she gasped.

"It's true, then!" She brought her hands to her mouth. "Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

Alina shrugged uncomfortably. "It happened this afternoon and you still haven't given me back my phone?"

"That's no excuse! To have to hear that my best friend is getting married from _Ivan_ – the man has no sense of how to tell a story." Genya sat down, exhaled loudly, and propped both her elbows on the desk with her chin in her palms. "You've been thinking about this for days and you didn't tell me."

"It didn't involve you."

"That's a harsh thing to say to a roommate. But," she flashed a big smile, "it involves me now!"

"It ... does?"

Genya rolled her eyes. "Do you seriously think I would let anyone else make your wedding dress? We're going to need to get started immediately – last week, ideally. I can bring in some fabric samples and magazines this evening. We're at war, so it's going to need to be something that has the appearance of being simple, but you're marrying the general so it can't _actually_ be simple." She cocked her head, then stood and put her hands back on her friend's shoulders.

"But first – how do _you_ feel?" 

Alina blushed, at once embarrassed by the attention and wanting more of it. "I'll feel better once I'm less caged up."

Genya was silent for a moment, then she pressed her forehead against Alina's and spoke quietly. "There are more ways out of this room than marrying him, you know."

"Not very many," Alina answered in the same low tones. She closed her eyes and exhaled. "I know what I'm doing, and things are going to be better. For Ravka. For me."

"They will be?" Genya whispered.

"Well," Alina amended, "at least they won't be worse."

She couldn't remember, later, which one of them had started the giggling, but soon they were both collapsed on the floor, really laughing for the first time since the Shadow had been used. Alina pulled their pillows and blankets onto the floor and Genya brought magazines and spent the night explaining to Alina why everything she said about what she liked in dresses was wrong. 

It was wonderful.

* * *

The general stood at his window, silhouetted in the filtered fall sunlight, back to her and phone pressed to his ear. She used the time it took her to cross the office to examine him, observe him without being observed. It was a rare opportunity. He said a few low sentences into the phone and hung up as she approached.

"I've agreed to marry you," Alina commented when turned towards her, taking pains to keep her tone more amused than angry, "but I'm still not allowed to make my way from my room to your office without an escort?"

She could almost hear Ivan's jaw clench at having been downgraded to escort. The general apparently could, too; he glanced up and gestured for his guard to leave. 

"It seems prudent to have you guarded when you're out of your room."

She smiled, not quite charming. "Still don't trust me?"

"Should I?" 

She didn't answer and he let the silence linger, his gaze settling on her face. There was something in his expression that she couldn't quite name. Some mixture of desire and regret. The moment passed, and he turned his attention back to the window. The sky still threatened snow, but so far none had materialized. She followed his gaze into the distance; from this floor, the grey sands were easily visible, bled into the horizon. She waited a minute before speaking.

"I'll need the papers. If I'm going to take responsibility for the Shadow, I need everything you have – the academic papers, the white papers, specs, emails. All of it. Today." 

"I'll see that you get them." He narrowed his eyes slightly at the landscape, as if looking for something that wasn't quite there. A beat. "I'm going to have to leave the city for several days."

"Problems in the south?" She'd heard a passing comment about border skirmishes with Shu Han. They were slightly less patient than Fjerda apparently, more curious to test the new leader's strength.

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Try to not to kill too many people unnecessarily."

"I appreciate the advice. I'll leave in the morning and won't be back until the wedding."

Alina nodded. "Genya's been taking her role in planning the whole thing very seriously. Which is lucky, because I apparently have terrible taste in ... Well. Everything." He slid his gaze to her and she shrugged. "Almost everything. Did you know that there are over a dozen different types of glasses that you could use to set a table and that they're called 'stemware'?" 

His lips twitched. "I did."

"Well. So do I, now. She doesn't seem to want my opinion on them, or on anything really, just wants to explain why her choice is the best." She sighed. "She spent an hour this morning scolding me for not holding out for a ring."

He turned towards her, expression unreadable. "A ring." 

"An engagement ring," she prompted. "Someone who knows the word _stemware_ has surely heard of them."

"Do you want one?"

She turned to lean against the window and face him more fully. "What I _want_ is to know that you'll keep the promises you made."

He echoed her smile from earlier. "Still don't trust me?"

"Should I?" 

He looked at her like she was something that didn't quite match up, like he was deciding whether or not that was an issue. After a few breaths, he apparently decided it wasn't and let his gaze travel the length of her body. 

She frowned. "Was there anything else or did you just want to look at me before you left?"

He lifted an eyebrow slightly. "Would that be a problem?"

"It wouldn't be if I were just here for decoration." She moved towards him, stepping close enough that he had to tilt his head towards her. "I've agreed to help you with the Americans, but don't forget your promises. I meant what I said about Fjerda."

His jaw tightened. "I hope you meant all of what you said."

A corner of her lips lifted slightly. "It sounds like you hope I mean things I _didn't_ say."

"Placating the Americans and handling our neighbors is going to be an extraordinary amount of work. We're going to have to be focused." His voice was slow and deliberate, but his eyes were dark.

She matched the heat of his gaze. "Who are you reminding?"

They stood in silent challenge for a few breaths, the air between them thick and charged. These moments, she knew, were the most dangerous: one stray spark and the whole thing could explode. 

When he spoke again, his lips barely moved. "Do me a favor and stay out of trouble while I'm gone."

"With you gone I don't think that will be a problem." She reached up and pushed a bit of dark hair back from where it had fallen on his forehead. "I'll see you at the altar, Aleksander."

* * *

The papers she requested arrived less than an hour after the meeting. She went through the ones she'd read the week before quickly, slowed when she got to the technical specs. The pieces that made up the Shadow fit together perfectly, wrapped on top of one another in a nearly seamless transition from a collection of individually inert materials to destroyer. It was brilliant. 

Too brilliant, by half.

She studied the underlying mechanics carefully, aware that missing any detail of them might give away her lack of involvement in its inception. She examined the documents on the part of the Shadow she'd helped to create, stared at them until her eyes burned. It had been used to trap her, but now ...

_This is mine_ , she thought, tracing her fingers over the plans. _Mine_.

* * *

The benefits of her engagement became apparent that evening; she was still escorted when she left her room but was permitted a larger range of motion than before. She wasn't given her phone or laptop, but she now took her meals in the large dining hall along with the people working in the palace. The food wasn't any better outside the room than in, but this, she supposed, was the price of war.

The hall was full of unfamiliar faces dressed in the khaki-and-red of infantry. Ivan and Fedyor seemed to know many of the other soldiers, and Alina liked to give them a chance to catch up during the meal. (She liked to give Fedyor a chance to, anyway – she quickly learned that Ivan wasn't much of a conversationalist even within his division.) She used the opportunity to read the newspaper, though the physical paper felt awkward in her hands and reading in Ravkan continued to be painfully slow. 

She elbowed Fedyor. "What's this word?" 

He glanced over from his conversation. " _Snosit_. Demolish."

She frowned. There was less of a civil war than she had feared – most of the President Vakhrov's supporters had either been sufficiently terrorized or killed within the first twenty-four hours, and they'd apparently stayed either terrified or dead. But there was activity on the borders. She read the news about Fjerda carefully, trying to construct maps of the threats and skirmishes in her mind, and pored over reports from the southern border, taking guesses as to where the general had been the day before.

She contemplated the tensions on the borders as she walked back to her room, but when she arrived, she found a war zone.

Her jaw dropped. Genya looked up from the center of the floor amidst an almost impossible number of pieces of small white fabric, fluttering in the draft created by the open door. 

"What happened here?"

"It's not what it looks like!" Genya stood, then surveyed the room. "Well, it might be exactly what it looks like."

Alina began to pick her way across the floor. "I go to breakfast and when I come back you've shredded an entire bolt of fabric." 

"Not ... exactly," Genya equivocated. "I was dealing with some of the lace. It was fussy. Things got out of control." 

Alina picked up what remained of the lace, a piece about the size of both her hands put together. "A wardrobe assassination. In service of its country."

"Ha _ha._ " Genya looked down at her watch. "As fun as it will be to clean all of this up, we have to get going." 

Alina raised her eyebrows. "Where to?"

"I organized a cake tasting! And don't you _dare_ give me that look, Alina Starkov. There is the opportunity for eating cake and we are going because, frankly, I deserve all the cake I can eat for pulling this wedding together in a week. Ivan, let's go!" He poked his head in the open door, looked once around the mess of a room and groaned quietly as he followed them out the door.

A large oak-and-marble dining hall situated just off the kitchen had been set aside for the tasting. A girl several years Alina's junior arranged a series of plates in front of each of the three of them, explaining in too-quick Ravkan the preparation that went into each cake. Alina enjoyed watching Genya taste the samples, pulling off small bites with her fork and closing her eyes to concentrate on each new flavor. 

"The base of the carrot cake is just the right amount of sweet," Genya mused as she opened her eyes after her a third bite, "but the frosting is too heavy for – Ivan, what on earth!"

Ivan sat with his arms crossed, the seven plates in front of him empty of anything other than crumbs and an occasional smear of fondant. Alina had been watching him inhale the food as Genya had savored it, and now she laughed. 

Genya snapped at him in Ravkan. "You were supposed to be tasting with us, not eating it all as quickly as you can!"

"I was hungry," he grunted.

She frowned. "At least you tried them all, which is more than Alina’s doing."

"Hey," Alina protested in English, "if you wanted me to eat, you should have told me about it before breakfast. Unlike Ivan, I am not a bottomless pit."

"Don't make excuses. Breakfast is always herring and everyone knows you hate it."

Alina shrugged and Genya used the side of her fork to cut off another small bite. "Since you've tried them all, Ivan, which did you like most?"

"I didn't notice."

"You have to have _some_ opinion. You can't not care at all which cake you'll be watching people eat at the wedding next week."

"You might be surprised," Ivan replied dryly, "by the depths of my not caring."

Genya sucked in her cheeks in disapproval, but when she caught Alina's eye she sighed melodramatically. "I guess it's up to me then," she winked. "It's always up to me."

* * *

Genya was kept busy with preparations for Alina's wedding, but other than posing while Genya fussed over the dress Alina herself was needed for very little. She was permitted access to the gym, where she used the treadmill twice a day (she'd tried to make a joke to Ivan about wedding diets, but he'd just stared at her in horror until she finished the punchline by coughing into her hand). She studied the papers she'd gotten about the Shadow, memorized them until the bomb and the mechanics were as much a part of her as breathing. With every inhale the wires fitted correctly into their places, and her exhale saw photons slamming into the core, beginning the process of destruction.

She continued reading newspapers at meals to follow along with what was happening outside of the palace walls. Whatever the general was doing in the south seemed to be working – the raids from the Shu were getting less frequent and less deadly every day. As the wedding approached, the papers predicted that all but a few divisions would be released from the draft by the end of the week. 

A couple days before the event, an article announced a national holiday for the marriage of _Soveren_ Morozova. 

* * *

Alina sat at her desk, letting her eyes lose focus as she looked again at the specs she'd already memorized. The door slammed hard behind her and she turned to see Genya coming in with a large box in her hands. "You're back early."

She set the box down. "Everything's in order for the wedding tomorrow. Your dress is ready and a crew of people are working on the cathedral and the reception hall, so I think that's that. Did you watch the videos I left you?"

A couple days before Ivan had lugged a large television into the room, a large box of the kind that Alina hadn’t seen in years other than sitting out on the curb. It at least had a DVD player, and Genya had produced a small stack of DVDs for Alina's education.

"Ravkan weddings," she'd explained. "You don't want your own to be the first one you see."

Alina had been planning to ignore the movies, but in the end, she'd watched all of them. Twice. 

She had no intention of being unprepared.

The services were unfamiliar, but she quickly picked up the pattern that the weddings followed. There was an aisle, a priest, an altar. The ceremony was long and most of the time the priest did the talking – she'd only have to say a few words when prompted, and she could manage that. There were crowns that the priest placed on the heads of the bride and groom and some amount of ceremony around that that she didn't quite understand, followed by an exchange of rings.

"I watched them, but the old Ravkan the priests speak is beyond me."

"It’s beyond all of us, really," Genya admitted. "Just put a vaguely pleasant smile on your face and you’ll be fine." She winked. "Trust me on that one."

Alina stood and walked to her friend. "What's in the box?"

Genya’s face brightened now. "It’s our evening activity." She reached into the box and pulled out a handle of alcohol. "Vodka!"

Alina lifted an eyebrow. "Really?"

"It's your last night as a single woman. And I don't know about you, but after these last couple weeks I could really use a drink." 

Alina laughed at that. "Alright, hand me the cups."

"No cups," Genya said, unscrewing the top. "We're Ravkan." She took a drink of the vodka then passed it to Alina, who drank and barely coughed. They sat on the floor, backs propped against the door, drinking and whispering into the night.

* * *

The wedding itself was to be at the largest cathedral in Os Alta, and by extension, the largest in the country. The dark grey stones on the outside were heavy and pitted from decades of war; inside, gold paintings sprawled across the vaulted ceilings stretching far above their heads.

Genya had commandeered the priest's office for the entire day of the wedding, and Alina had sat, stood, and turned patiently as Genya transformed her from a soldier and a prisoner into a bride. It had taken several hours and a not insignificant amount of profanity on Genya's part as she'd adjusted the fabric of the dress, the curls of her hair, and positioned the veil exactly right. 

The lines of the dress were simple, but the details were exceptional – swoops of lace and embroidery gave the dress a depth of feeling that Alina had never experienced before. Her hairpins were topped with real diamonds and the crystals that weighed the edges of the veil brushed her shoulder blades when she walked. By early afternoon Genya had finally finished fussing over Alina and, at the bride's insistence, had taken her seat in the main room of the cathedral. 

The priest would come fetch her when it was time for the ceremony to begin. But for now, Alina pushed aside the thin silk curtains and looked out the window.

It opened onto a private courtyard, the green of the fir trees contrasting starkly with the thick grey sky. The snow that had been threatening to fall had finally begun, the first thick, fat flakes floating across the landscape as the light slanted across the October sky. She rested her forehead on the window, smiling to herself at the coolness of the glass; it was the first time in weeks that she'd seen a window that wasn't bulletproof.

The door opened behind her and she sighed. "You can't possibly have forgotten anything, Genya. I'm weighed down like a –"

Then her eyes met the grey ones in the window's reflection and the comment died on her lips. She turned towards the general.

He looked no worse for wear after nearly a week on the road and wore a mask no different than the one she'd seen him wear hundreds of times before. The suit he'd chosen was fitted, dark, and accentuated the sharp planes of his body. She bit the inside of her cheek hard as she examined the deliberate angles of his pose. _They shouldn't make monsters like this_. 

She forced an exhale. "You made it back in one piece." 

His lips quirked to the side. "Were you worried about me?"

She changed the topic. "I thought you weren't supposed to see me before the ceremony."

"Superstition." 

"Because it doesn't serve your purposes?"

"Mmm." His gaze traveled carefully across her jewelry, her veil, the lines of her dress. She fidgeted, searching for a place to put her arms that wouldn't leave them dangling at her side or crossed in front of her carefully arranged chest. She wanted to sit, but Genya had warned her that it would ruin the line of the dress (what good a dress is if you can't sit down in it is a discussion Genya had been unwilling to have). She settled with putting her hands on her hips and exhaling loudly. 

His eyes moved back up to meet hers, every movement calculated, precise. "You're nervous."

"No I'm not. I marry military dictators in front of thousands of people every day. What's to be nervous about?"

"You don't have to be nervous."

_Well, then._ "It must be convenient to not have emotions."

His face tensed, then visibly relaxed. He reached into his pocket and produced a black velvet case, nearly the same size as his palm, and held it out to her. He passed it to her and she took it, surprised at the weight, and cracked it open.

There was a rectangular black stone the length of one her finger bones, completely encircled by two rows of diamonds. Suddenly the weight of the box made perfect sense.

"You asked about a ring."

She stared at the jewelry. "Where did you get this?"

"My mother had it."

Alina looked up and blinked. She couldn't imagine Baghra condoning their marriage. "She gave you her engagement ring?"

"No."

Alina raised an eyebrow. "She didn't give it to you?"

"She didn't give it to me and it's not her engagement ring." He nodded towards the box. "Put it on."

"Not until you tell me what it is. And remember that agreement we have about you not lying."

He watched her for a moment, considering. "She stole it."

"You're giving me a stolen engagement ring."

"Let me finish." His jaw ticked. "She stole it from the Fjerdan court." 

"She went to Fjerda to steal a ring?" 

A sigh. "It was a long time ago, and not my story to tell. Suffice it to say that she didn't go, she was taken, and when she escaped she took what she could, that ring included. There was a time when it was well known at the Fjerdan court." He gestured towards the box. "It's called _Zwarte Ijs._ "

Alina looked back down at the ring. "You're giving me a _famous_ stolen engagement ring."

"It's not an engagement ring. It's a promise," he said. "I've started the process of negotiating a temporary ceasefire with Fjerda until you're ready to command it. You want to call the shots in that war – that power is in your hands. Whenever you're ready for the full wrath of the Fjerdan court, put on the ring and we’ll visit their ambassador." He let out an exhale that was almost a laugh. "It will save Ravka the awkwardness of being the first country to declare war."

Alina stared, transfixed, at the dark heat within the jewels. "It's a threat."

"A promise," he corrected. He took the box from her, removed the ring, and slid it onto her finger. The weight was incredible. He stepped closer and placed her palm on his chest and before lifting and running a hand lightly down the side of her veil. His gaze followed the outline of her features, her lips. 

"I think," he continued, head bent towards her, "that we can both get what we want out of this marriage."

The light caught in the heart of the black stone, reflected in the diamonds. She looked up from the ring and met his gaze. "I think we can, Aleksander."

* * *

The last rays of sun filtered in through the snowflakes as she made her way down the aisle. The crowd stood as she entered and a sea of unfamiliar faces turned towards her, those farthest away standing on toes to get a better look. As she approached the front she saw Ivan positioned a discrete distance away from the altar next to Genya, handkerchief already out and in use. Baghra sat along side them, a frown etched across her lips. 

The general watched her approach. He watched though he thought that she might run, as though something might happen to disrupt his plans if he let his gaze wander for even a moment. She walked up the stairs and positioned herself across from him, straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. 

There had been a time when she had imagined she'd be looking into eyes softer than these at her wedding. A time when she couldn't have imagined a priest speaking in Old Ravkan, when she couldn't have fathomed spending her life with other than the friend she'd had since she was a child. There had been a time when she hadn't known who she was without him.

But now she thought back to the solar cells waiting for her in the lab. She thought of the ring, tucked inside her coat in the priest's office. Thought of everything she'd done, everything she would do.

There were many things she could regret. But standing here, the center of attention and the sole focus of the man across from her, she found that of all the things she felt, regret wasn't one. 

He kept his eyes on hers as the priest spoke. He repeated words as he was prompted, but he didn't break eye contact with her even as he ducked his head to allow the priest to give him a crown. It had looked, in the videos Alina had seen, somewhere between ridiculous and playful to watch grown men and women wear the headdresses of monarchs. But when he wore his there was nothing lighthearted about it – he was all cold dark beauty. _He was meant to wear a crown_. 

That was followed quickly by another thought: _And so was I._

The priest pressed rings into both of their palms and she repeated the words as she slid the one she'd been given onto the general's finger. He murmured a sentence in response, fitting a small gold eclipse just above her own knuckle. 

A few more psalms, and the priest fell silent. Aleksander looked at her, and for the first time since the ceremony began, she saw his jaw relax. He held out a hand and she took it. There was applause as he pressed his lips to hers.

Hidden from view by her veil, she felt them curve into a smile.

* * *

Neither Alina nor the general had a chance to eat any of the cake Genya selected, in the end. 

The reception was in a ballroom decorated heavily with Ravkan colors and trimmed with black and gold. There was food and music: enough of each to be festive, not enough to be frivolous. There was dancing, too – it was a Ravkan event, after all – first a Ravkan folk group, then line dances and hours of waltzes. But despite the careful work Genya had put in to concealing her scar, Alina didn't participate.

For her, the evening was an endless stream of guests who wanted to shake hands with Ravka’s new First Couple, wanted to be seen wishing the new leader of the country well. It was a painfully political affair.

It was nearly three in the morning by the time the general led her out of the ballroom and into the waiting car. When the car stopped in front of the general's house, Alina blinked. "I hadn't realized you still lived here."

"We're outfitting the building across the street to be the new center of government." He nodded in that direction, and she saw the large building, the construction surrounding it. "As soon as we do, we can burn the palace to the ground."

Alina laughed as they exited the limo. "And Ravka will be prettier for it." 

Minutes later she stood, hands braced to either side on the windowsill, looking out from the general's bedroom – her bedroom – onto the city below. It was deep night, few streetlights still burning and even fewer houses lit. The moon cast a pale glow onto the buildings, but even that soon threatened to disappear over the mountains. 

The general entered the room and she caught his eye in the reflection. He stood still for a moment before walking towards her. She felt his hands on the nape of her neck, at the beginning of the line of delicate cloth-covered buttons that ran from her collar down well beyond her hips. It had taken Genya nearly fifteen minutes to do them all correctly that morning; there was no way Alina could have gotten out of this dress alone without a pair of scissors. She felt the first few buttons release under careful direction from his fingers, and he continued, one at a time, in silence. 

She looked up at his reflection after a few moments. "You're smiling." It was an accusation, but he ignored her tone, the curve of his lips deepening. "Why are you smiling?"

He was silent for a while longer, keeping his gaze directed towards her back and the careful precision of his movements – silent for a long enough that she thought he'd decided not to answer her. 

"It's so rare," he observed finally, "that something is really mine."

She snorted. "That's hardly true – all of Ravka is yours."

"I'm Ravka's," he corrected, continuing slowly down the buttons on her dress. "But you. _You_ are mine."

He reached the last button and she let the dress fall, turning to face him. "Am I?" 

His eyes glinted and the muscles of his face shifted slightly. There was a tightness, a hesitation, a new shadow and a new fire in his gaze, and when he bent to kiss her his lips tasted different, somehow. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself up into the embrace, her tongue meeting his. His hands ran down her back and when he pulled her she let herself be lifted, grasping his waist with her thighs. 

_Revenge_ , she decided, sinking deeper into the kiss as he carried her to the bed. _He tastes like revenge._

_Or at least the promise of it._

* * *

Alina was awoken not long after sunrise. She searched groggily through her memories, breath catching as she remembered the Shadow and the last two weeks. She held it as she opened her eyes and saw her husband in the morning light for the first time.

"Get up and shower. We’re leaving soon."

_Always a helpless romantic._ She groaned and threw an arm across her eyes, trying to block out the light. "Didn't we just fall asleep?"

"You can sleep in the car. Our honeymoon itinerary demands an early start."

She heard papers dropped on the pillow next to her head, and after a long sigh, she picked them up and began to read through them. She flipped from one page to the next, and looked at him over the top.

"This isn't a honeymoon," she pointed out. "This is a genocide tour." 

The stops were all places that she recognized from the articles she'd read and the research she'd done. Mostly border towns, all nearly demolished in the civil war either by the rebels or by one of Ravka's neighbors. 

"We're touring the country," he explained, pulling up collar of his shirt. "The people need to see me. And you need to see the people." She narrowed her eyes and him and he indicated the direction of the bathroom with his head. "Shower."

Now she was wrapped in a large, dark towel, examining the closet that he'd directed her towards. Nearly identical black suits and a few dark dress uniforms filled one half of it.

" _Soverenyi_ doesn’t even get his own closet?"

"I'd never planned on sharing it. But we all make sacrifices."

"Yes, yes, for Ravka," she sighed. "Where are my clothes?"

"On the right."

She looked in that direction, but didn’t see any she recognized. Just some that were –

" _No_." She pulled out a uniform that had a gold eclipse pinned onto the breast. "You are _not_ dressing me in all black." 

He buttoned his cuffs. "You're playing politics now. Clothing sends a strong message."

"I'm not wearing this."

"It's not up for negotiation."

She rubbed the fabric between her fingertips. "This feels different from my other uniforms." 

"It's made from the same material as my suits." 

"Why is it so thick?"

"It's bulletproof."

She opened her mouth, then closed it. "I knew you were dangerous," she decided on finally, "but bullets?"

"This marriage will keep you safe from extradition. It does, however, come with certain additional risks."

"It sounds like I wasn’t the first person to try to kill you."

"Not nearly." She frowned at the outfit though she found she had no desire protest wearing clothing that was less likely to get her killed. Staying alive, at least for a while, was an important part of her plan.

"I've survived a lot, Alina," he said, his tone clearly indicating more than just assassination attempts. "We'll survive this, too."

* * *

The general had gotten a phone call right as they were about to leave and had gestured impatiently for her to continue ahead of him. As she exited the house, the cold air hit her square in the chest taking her breath the moment she stepped out the door. The snow that had started before the wedding had continued through the night, and she stepped into maybe an inch of powder with more fat flakes blowing in the wind. She pulled the hood of her coat up quickly and hurried to the car where Fedyor waited, opening the door at hear approach.

" _Soverenyi_ ," he nodded.

She turned to see if her husband had finished the phone call and was, in fact, right behind her. It took her a moment of looking at the empty space between her and the house to realize what had just happened. 

_Oh_. She turned back to face the guard, took a deep breath, and walked the last few steps more confidently than she felt. "Thank you, Fedyor."

If he caught her embarrassment his expression didn't show it. " _Soverenyi_ ," he repeated, closing the door behind her. 

* * *

Alina didn’t have the words to express the relief she felt when she was seated in the limo and looked up to see Genya across from her. 

"Genya!" She leaned over and hugged her friend awkwardly at first, then surprised by the strength of her grip. "I hadn't realized you were coming."

"I'd never miss something as exciting as your honeymoon." Genya released Alina, then winked. "There's lots to be done. And now that the wedding is over we can get back to real work." 

"And that is?"

The door opened and the general slid in next to Alina, nodded at Genya. 

" _Soverenyi,_ " she nodded back.

"You brought the papers?" he asked as the car engine hummed to life.

Genya pulled out a stack of folders from a bag on the seat next to her. "I always do." 

The car pulled out of the driveway and started its journey, followed closely by an SUV with their guards. Genya spread a map across her knees and onto the general's; they both bent over the terrain, discussing the activity on the southern border in low voices and something related to transportation infrastructure. Alina half-listened, just enough to reassure herself that it was nothing she needed to be concerned with. There were hours before they’d arrive – the distance wasn't very large but the mountains and valleys made travel slow. She let herself nod off, head pressed against the window, the soft hum of the road buzzing in her jaw. 

She awoke some hours later, the sun full bright, and blinked groggily at the unfamiliar scenery before turning her head towards her companions. Genya was talking into her phone, a low murmur of directed questions and instructions, and the general was reading the contents of a manilla folder that lay open in his lap. He was absorbed in the content, one thumb absently tapping his knee in concentration. 

She moved her gaze from his face, followed his arm to where his hand rested on the seat between them, fingers entwined with her own.

She leaned her head back on soft leather. There would be a time, later, when she wouldn't have the luxury of rest. Right now, though, there was nothing for her to do but sleep. 

She closed her eyes and smiled. 

* * *

The door opened and she took her husband's hand as she exited the limo. The air in the valley was cold, colder than it had been in Os Alta, and she pulled her hood around her ears again, brushing the scarf wound around her hair.

The scarf had been a source of contention for the last half hour. When Genya had produced it and instructed Alina to switch seats so she could put it on, Alina had balked. 

"I am not putting that over my hair."

Genya had simply folded the fabric and sighed. "Married women in Ravka don’t run around with their hair unbound. It's just not _done_ , especially not in the villages. In Os Alta maybe you could get away with a kerchief, but in the rural areas and with your position, it'd be like … " She grasped for an explanation. "It would be like you not wearing a shirt."

"Now that I'm married my hair is suddenly sexy?"

"It's not that. It's a cultural thing. You wouldn't show up and spit at the people there – you shouldn't show up with your hair uncovered." Alina had seen the ministers and minister's wives wearing kerchiefs over their hair, some of them even scarves wrapped in this style. But she couldn't remember ever really _thinking_ about it.

Alina grunted and turned to the general, who'd been watching the two of them. "Well?" she prompted.

"Genya's right." 

"Your mom doesn't wear one," she pointed out.

"She's never been married." He turned back to his papers. "Put it on, Alina." 

Alina had fidgeted horribly enough that Genya had smacked her shoulder with the hairbrush in frustration twice in the process, but in the end, Genya had been satisfied with her handiwork. Now, pulling the hood over her head, Alina grudgingly appreciated the extra warmth. 

She looked up and froze. 

They stood in the middle of a town square, one that could have come straight out of a painting. The buildings were wood for the most part, roofs slanted and sturdy for the winter, but the construction wasn't quite modern. The roads she'd felt on the approach and now saw that they were packed dirt under a thin layer of snow, too poorly maintained for even cobblestone. Beyond the building she expected to see farms or maybe forest, but mountains of mostly bare rock rose around them. People gathered in a half-circle around the car, children in dark coats hiding behind their parents, men and women with faces etched by wind and winter. It felt like she'd stepped back in time, and it took her a moment to realize what made the scene seem so antiquated. 

There was no electricity. 

No hum of motors, no lights. Even in midday, the lack of it was startling. She stood next to her husband and looked back at the people, the distribution of ages skewing much younger than it would have in a country less ravaged by war. 

He spoke quietly in Ravkan, for her ears only. "Ravka lives and dies in its villages. It's time for you to meet your country."

* * *

The trip broke her heart in two. The general hadn't exaggerated the day they met when he said that the villages were poor and starting to lose hope. The people were near breaking, the land seemed to produce nothing but orphans and those at an alarming rate. The people they met shook the hand of their new leader and his wife with more resignation than anything else. Hope, like most of their resources, was scarce; they couldn't afford to spend it on just anyone. When a girl a few years younger than Alina smiled at her, she returned the gesture in a sigh of relief.

The entourage only spoke Ravkan outside of the car and Alina heard the diversity of accents in the country for the first time: this one a lilting red, that a clipped blue. Her head ached with the effort it took to understand and to force out her own words in response. 

And when she did speak, what could she say? There was nothing she could offer, no promise she could make that they hadn't heard before. So she stood next to the general and listened to their stories, followed them through their lands. 

She saw the geography for herself for the first time and realized that there was more to it than the books had conveyed, that the mountains had wind tunnels and streams and that the sun reflected off the water as the autumn wind rustled the branches of a nearby bush.

There would be no stop to Ravkan wars any time soon if either she or the general had their way. But the lack of electricity – that she could do something about.

* * *

Marriage did not make Aleksander Morozova more affectionate. Nor did it make him more inclined to tell stories of his childhood, nor sleep better. Marriage did, however, make him more possessive.

He grabbed her hand as they walked the narrow village roads and he held her wrist as they followed children through mountain paths. His fingers dug into her thigh as they they drove between valleys, the pressure just this side of painful.

Initially, she assumed this was for the benefit of the other people present, even when those people were just his staff and guards. But the way the leader of Ravka curled into her body at night, grasping at her hair, palms and mouth pressing hard against her skin, she realized that for once he didn't have a purpose or pretense. He held onto her because he needed her, because he _wanted_ her. Because he was afraid of that want.

She watched the moonlight move across his features, saw their careful rearrangement from vulnerability back to king. The uneasy peace between them allowed for only so much intimacy; there was something unknown and unknowable in the set of his jaw and the paper-thin scars across the bridge of his nose. She kept her own expression blank as she ran her fingertips lightly across his face. He tracked her movement, his irises glinting from the dark shadows of his eyes.

_I will have your secrets, Aleksander_. 

He reached a hand toward her hip and pulled her towards him, his tongue and teeth hot against her throat. She bent her head back and dug her fingers into his waist.

_And I will have my revenge._

* * *

She hadn't paid much attention when the general had mentioned adding one last stop to their trip, didn't think when she stepped out of the limo into the last village before they headed back to Os Alta. She was exhausted, a far deeper sort of tired than when she had been working on Solnyshko. She got out of the car expecting another town square, another mountain village full of adults with hard eyes and children quieter than they should be. But when she looked around, there was nothing in the valley other than rubble and one lone building, a dark stone church, spire stretching into the sky.

Her breath caught. 

"Dva Stolba." Her hometown. The general moved beside her, wrapped his fingers around hers, and they stared at the church in silence for several minutes before he pulled gently on her hand, leading her towards the entrance. 

The hinges complained loudly as the heavy wooden door swung open for the first time in twenty-three years. They stepped inside, eyes adjusting slowly to the dim light that filtered through the filthy windows as pews, a faded carpet, and a dust-covered altar come into view before them. When she pulled her hand from his he let her go, and she walked slowly down the aisle towards the front of the church. 

Had her parents stood here, where she stood now? Had they sat with her in these pews? What memories lived here? Who might she have been? 

Ghosts walked with her as the took the few stairs and sunk to her knees in front of the altar. 

She grasped the hem of the tablecloth between her fingers and lifted it, holding her coat over her mouth and nose to avoid inhaling the dust. There was nothing under the altar, just carpet marginally more protected from sun and dust than the rest of the church. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed a dark circle on the carpet, black with age. She ran a fingernail against the dried blood and it flaked. 

_This is where I'm from_. _This is where my story begins_.

The sun had shifted and the room was darker by the time she heard her husband approach and stop behind her. She looked at the bloodstain one last time before dropping the tablecloth, leaving it as it had been. She stood and saw him watching her, eyes carefully searching her face. 

She wondered what he saw.

When he spoke, it was quiet – there were ghosts even he didn't want to disturb. "Are you ready?"

She looked at him, felt her broken heart, felt for a moment the weight of the destruction that had happened and all that was yet to come. She pressed her palm against his, interlaced their fingers.

"Yes," she replied. "I am."


	16. Chapter 16

Alina lay diagonally across the bed, laptop open. They'd returned from their honeymoon a couple hours before, and she'd spent the first part of the evening wandering through her new home. The rest of it had the same dark modern aesthetic as the parts she'd seen but it was far larger than it had appeared from the outside – there was a gym, several large living rooms with what looked to be deliberately uncomfortable seating arrangements, a wing for the guards and the domestic help. She wandered through the hallways of their own wing, opening the doors and peering inside until she came to one corridor whose doors were all locked. She had rattled the handles on each of the doors, failing to open each, until the last gave way.

Her husband had sat at a desk, the room dark except for a lamp. He'd glanced up when she opened the door and continued his phone conversation. The room was sparse, decorated for function rather than appeal, meant for solitary study rather than entertaining guests. She had watched him as he spoke; the heat of his gaze had made her hesitate for a moment before she'd closed the door quietly. 

She had been given her computer and phone back upon their return to Os Alta, and she was now going through her inbox ( _2841 new emails!_ the site had helpfully announced) starting with the oldest messages first. There were plenty of bulletins, but very little email that was addressed to her personally. She was making good progress skimming through them when the general entered the room. She keyed through to the next email as he paused then lay down next to her, watching her.

"I'm busy," she said after a moment.

"I can see that."

She archived a message and moved onto the next one. She was halfway through when long fingers closed around her wrist and lifted her hand from the keyboard before closing the laptop. She turned towards the general, who lay, propped up on an elbow and watching her intently. She bristled. "I was in the middle of –"

"Sergei's dead."

Alina's breath cut off in the middle, and the world around her stopped for a moment. _Sergei's dead_. 

She had spent so much time worrying about her division, poring over newspapers for any hint of information, but somehow this caught her completely by surprise. When had she seen him last? At the event, that afternoon, before the Shadow. He'd been with Marie. She thought back to how he had looked; she knew enough of death to know that people don't look like they'll die suddenly beforehand, but she still found herself searching her memory of his face for some hint, some foretelling, desperate for an explanation.

Her attention snapped back to the man across from her. He was completely focused on her, had reached out and put a hand on her lower back. In anyone else it might have passed for affection, but it took her half a second to realize that it was something else entirely.

It was a test.

She kept her voice steady. "How?"

"A border raid in the South."

Sergei's death hadn't been her fault, but she also wasn't absolved of responsibility. Had decisions she had made put in him harm's way? Had her insistence on backing off on Fjerda meant that the Shu were being more aggressive? 

The general watched her for a response, and she remembered what he'd said about making decisions in war: _Most people can't live with any of them._

She tightened her throat around her grief and forced the muscles in her body to relax, allowed his hand to sink deeper towards her spine. "He was a good man."

"He was," the general agreed, still studying her intensely. 

He was waiting for her to cry, waiting for her to lose control. He was looking for a crack in her facade that would show she couldn't command a war with Fjerda. So she kept her breath even and turned her body so that she faced him, letting his hand slide to her waist and meeting his gaze, unwavering. "Was there anything else?"

He watched her still, evaluating, his grey eyes soft despite of their intensity. After a minute, his face shifted into a more neutral position, though she thought she saw a flicker of something else. "The secretary will be landing tomorrow afternoon. We'll have a better sense of what time in the morning."

She had been right that it was a test, and she had passed. She nodded and exhaled carefully. "How are things in the south now?"

"Not dire."

"Is that good?"

"Nothing in war is good." He lifted his hand from her side and tugged at where Genya had tucked the scarf around Alina's hair underneath itself, beginning to unravel it from her head. 

"I want to get started on Fjerda," she said, tilting her head slightly to allow him to continue.

He lifted an eyebrow. "We have a lot going on at the moment."

"We'll have a lot going on next week, too. I want to start today."

He unwound her scarf in silence for another breath. "It's not ready now. We'll begin the day after tomorrow." He finished and her hair fell around her shoulders. 

He watched her, appraising, for long enough that she rolled her eyes. "You keep looking at me like you can't decide whether I'm a weapon or an ornament."

His lips twitched. "Only a fool would keep you for an ornament."

"You've been called worse," she pointed out.

"Mostly by you." 

She let out a puff of laughter. "You've decided I'm a weapon, then."

"Everyone is a weapon in the right hands." He pushed her laptop to the side and wrapped his fingers around her hip. The way he looked at her had shifted yet again.

_Ah, yes_. "Yours, I'm guessing?" 

"Yes." He smiled, fingertips digging into her hipbone. "Mine."

* * *

"The secretary's plane is scheduled to land at four this afternoon."

Alina looked in the mirror as she adjusted the kerchief on her head. It pushed the front of her hair out towards her forehead whenever she put it on; Genya didn't seem to have this problem but she couldn't ask her friend to come over and fix her hair every morning. She'd have to figure something else out.

She slid her gaze over to the man beside her. He was done dressing, of course – he'd been up for hours. The sun hit the mirror at an uncomfortable angle as it was rising, and she realized that her husband probably always dressed well before then.

"Are you going to help or just stand there and judge?"

"I'm not judging." His tone was mild but he reached over and lifted the fabric as Alina adjusted her hair underneath it. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. Her new uniforms were so _dark_. And heavy, but she preferred not to think about that part. 

She forced herself to look at her hair. "Better, I guess."

"Did you hear what I said about the Secretary?"

She turned and started packing a bag with her laptop and other electronics. She'd gotten her phone back when they'd returned to Os Alta the night before but she still hadn't turned it back on. "Landing at four. I'll be ready to leave the lab at three."

"The lab."

She turned towards him and saw that he hadn't moved, still in the same place in front of the mirror. "Yes," she prompted, slowly. "The lab." 

"No."

"I'm not going to get Solnyshko in villages by sitting here and wishing for it really hard. Or have you forgotten our agreement?"

"I've forgotten nothing," he replied, tone controlled as ever but deliberately so. "But I'm not letting you out of my sight."

One side of her lip curled. "What exactly is it that you think is going to happen? You must know by now I'm not planning on running." 

"It's not the running that concerns me." 

She put her bag over one shoulder and batted her eyes. "You're going to miss me too much?" 

"And if I said that was the reason?"

"Is it?" He didn't answer and she smiled. "I'll be ready at three. Have a car pick me up then."

* * *

It was almost eerie to walk back into the lab. It had stayed the same, though she wasn't the person she had been when she was last in it nearly three weeks ago. Her lips moved into something resembling a smile – not a happy one – as she remembered how hard she'd worked, how naive she'd been.

How _foolish_.

Now Fedyor trailed her into the lab – a guard following her to work was a battle she had chosen not to fight. She didn't mind having someone else along if she was able to dictate where the two of them went. 

The conversation died as she approached her workstation. Her division was gathered around a table and several of them looked up at her, eyes wide.

Harshaw grinned and walked towards her. "Welcome back!" He began to reach to hug her but pulled back when he saw Fedyor. "It's good to see you, Ali – er, Starkov – er." He glanced down at her uniform, took in the label and insignia. " _Sardzhent_ Morozova." 

She and the general hadn't discussed her changing her name; he'd simply had her new uniforms made with his own. She would have been more bothered, but she'd spent much of the time since she'd learned about her birth parents oscillating between the two unknown histories, wondering if she was really more Starkov than she was Bessmertny. This settled the whole thing rather nicely: if she was anything now, wasn't she what he had made her? 

After all, everyone is a weapon in the right hands.

She gave Harshaw a smile – a happy one – and a hug that, after a moment's hesitation, he returned. "Alina's fine."

From behind her, she heard Zoya snort. " _Sardzhent_? Only _you_ could marry the general and not even get a promotion out of it." 

Alina turned and lifted an eyebrow at her lieutenant. "I also go by _Soverenyi_ these days if you'd prefer." 

"Over my –" She cast a glance at Alina's guard and cut herself short, mouth pulling into a frown. "Nice of you to join us again, _Sardzhent_." 

The rest of Alina's division had stayed around the table, Davna drawing in her sketchbook, Eva and Alexei whispering with heads bent together, Ana flipping her switchblade. Nadia sat, brow creased, her hand resting lightly on Marie's forearm while Marie, oblivious to Ana's knife just a foot away, stared out blankly into space. 

Alina squeezed her eyelids shut. _Most people can't live with any of them._ She swallowed the bile in her throat and opened her eyes.

"Marie," she said, "I'm so sorry."

Marie moved her gaze to Alina's face and blinked twice, but didn't give any other indication of a reply.

"She's taking Sergei's death really hard," Nadia whispered, as if that wasn't completely apparent to anyone with eyes. 

"I'm glad _you_ made it." This was from Ana, who pointed her blade at Alina. "For a while I didn't think you would." 

"You and me both," Alina acknowledged. There were several moments of silence in which everyone watched Marie. Alexei cleared his throat and Alina sat down. "How were the last few weeks for you?"

No one answered immediately, so Ana glanced around. "I drove a tank," she offered.

When she didn't continue, Alina prompted: "Is that a good thing, or ...?"

She shrugged. "No one tells me I'm driving too fast in a tank." 

"That's because a tank has _armor on it_ ," Eva sighed, exasperated. This was clearly not the first time they'd had this conversation.

Alina shook her head. She only had a handful of hours before she had to leave, and she needed to get started. "First thing." She looked each of them in the eye and exhaled, feeling the air in the room shift even before she asked the question. "Who knew?"

She'd wondered plenty in the last few weeks who from her division had been involved in the creation of the Shadow and had, she thought, reasoned most of it out on her own. She could have asked her husband, of course, but she needed to hear it from them. 

The twins glanced at each other in the silence that followed. "We knew," Alexei said finally.

"We did most of it," Eva explained, embarrassed. "With the weapons division. There was a whole ... thing. It was complicated. And a lot of work." He fidgeted under her gaze and then nodded to Marie and Davna. "They helped, too." 

Alina nodded, unsurprised. She asked another question she knew the answer to. "Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?"

They exchanged a glance again. "It was classified," Alexei shrugged. "You didn't have clearance."

"Also, you didn't _ask_ ," Davna said.

"Sergei wanted to tell you." Everyone, including Marie, seemed startled to hear her speak. "He did," she whispered, retreating back into herself even as she said it.

The discomfort was palpable, Ana glaring at the rest of the team. She hadn't been involved, and though Alina still hadn't reasoned out why she was hoping to use it to her advantage. "So," she continued, turning back to the whole group, "who wants to show me?"

* * *

Alina, Ana, Zoya, and Harshaw – and, of course, Fedyor – followed Eva and Alexei down several flights of stairs. She had thought that there would be a large room somewhere like in those old films about the atomic bomb, a secret city in the middle of the desert where the best minds were brought to task. But when they walked down a hallway and Alexei opened the room with his palm print, she found nothing more than a medium-sized, largely empty space. 

There was room to assemble the weapons, to be sure – twin tables with plenty of space where one used to be. There was a large table to the other side, the guts of the Shadow fully on display. It was immediately familiar to her, given the time she'd spent studying the specs, but she went over and lifted onto her toes to look inside, seeing in person what was already firmly entrenched in her brain. The wires twisted carefully around a center core composed of nothing that was volatile or dangerous on its own, completely inert without a filter that could combine and then split photons. 

The twins shifted their weight quietly as the rest of them, who had been otherwise occupied while Alina had been locked in a room with nothing but the specs of the Shadow for a week, looked the weapon over carefully. Specs were spread out on a low table beside them and Zoya and Ana read them as Alina examined the mechanism that hooked the filter into the rest of the bomb.

The quiet was near complete, almost reverent. It was only after nearly half an hour that Ana broke the silence. "Mother _fucker_."

"This is insane," Harshaw said. "It's like taking everything we've done and, and –"

"And turning it into a bomb?" Alina finished. He gave a heavy exhale in response.

"I don't think keeping it here is a good idea," Zoya equivocated.

Alina shook her head. "We're going to need it here."

A perfectly manicured eyebrow arched in her direction. "Need it?"

"The Americans are going to want to see it," Alina explained, then smiled. "They're going to want to see them. _All_ of them." She waved her arms expansively. "We're going to need a second room to hold all of them. Maybe a third."

* * *

  

The afternoon approached far faster than Alina had anticipated. She'd had enough time to put Eva and Alexei in charge of production of the next few dozen Shadows, instructed Davna on getting someone else up to speed on making the film that would be used to complete them. There would need to be additional safety precautions now, and those she put Ana in charge of. 

Eva had been outraged. "You're putting _her_ in charge of _safety_? She's a maniac!" 

"I maniac who I bet has already thought of seven ways to get into that room that you haven't," countered Alina.

"Eight," Ana called from her workstation.

Alina had sat down next to Marie, not expecting a response, but the other woman had turned towards her almost immediately. "I don't want to," she whispered.

Alina spoke equally quietly. "Don't want to what?" 

"I don't want to make weapons," she whispered, eyes wide, focused for the first time that day. "I don't want to anymore."

There was a horrible moment in which Alina envied Marie: envied her ability to say no, her freedom to change herself. The stab of envy gut was replaced immediately by a feeling of relief, then guilt.

She pushed all those feelings aside. "You don't have to," she said. "I'll be back in a few days, and I'll get you started on something else then. You don't have to work on weapons if you don't want to." Marie's face, wide and frightened, suddenly crumpled. Alina wrapped an arm around her, rocked her slowly. "You don't have to anymore."

* * *

The secretary's plane taxied on the far end of the tarmac, and Alina wished that protocol would have allowed them to all meet inside or at least to wrap scarves around their faces. Even though the snow was gone and the line of the general's largest guards functioned as a sort of wind block behind her, the cold bit painfully at her features.

It was a small entourage other than the guards; just Alina with the new foreign minister on one side and her husband on the other, his fingers firmly wrapped around her wrist. Genya had been in the limo that had picked her up at the lab but hadn't exited when they reached the airport. "I'm going to sit this one out," she'd explained.

"You'll be on the roof with a sniper rifle, you mean."

Genya had winked. "Just in case." 

Alina was pretty sure they had been joking, but she still fought the urge to glance up to the roof of the building as the plane made its way slowly over to them, seemingly inching across the empty expanse of concrete. "Can't they go any faster?" Alina mumbled, and she felt the general's grip on her wrist tighten. No one replied.

The door opened and, after several dramatic moments, the secretary emerged. She was wearing a suit with _no coat_ , and though she must have been unbearably cold she didn't give any indication that the temperature was getting to her. Her eyes were a frozen blue that Alina could see even from this distance, her hair an unnatural blond. She frowned momentarily, looking at the mountains surrounding the city. Then her gaze landed on the general and her lips moved into a smile that did not touch the ice of her eyes. She started down the stairs, followed closely by a small crew of much more appropriately-attired staff.

The general nodded at her approach. "Secretary Lantsov."

Alina hadn't forgotten that the secretary was Nikolai's mother, and even if she had, she would have remembered that morning when she finally turned on her phone. She had had a series of texts from Nikolai, starting with a _HOLY SHIT ALINA_ the day after her wedding and going somewhat downhill from there. The last few had been more reconciliatory in their tone: _we need to talk, please call me_. She had figured he'd meant to warn her about his mother's arrival, but as she'd been reading the last messages the car had pulled up to her lab and she hadn't yet gotten around to replying. 

"Last time I saw you," the general continued, "you were chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. I trust you're settling into your new role nicely." 

"And I trust you're settling into yours nicely as well, if with somewhat more blood on your hands." She shook his hand, a hard shake, and as she did a flash went off. Alina wondered at the photo that would result, the two sets of lips turned up beneath humorless eyes. "I didn't think we'd meet again so soon."

"Nor did I."

"I find that hard to believe – _Prezident_ Morozova, is it?"

"You're well aware that it's not," he replied mildly. He turned to one of the staffers behind her. "Grace, it's lovely to see you again."

The staffer pressed her lips together and glared at him, flushing, black hair falling in front of her face.

Secretary Lantsov glanced at Alina. "I hear we're to congratulate you on your recent marriage."

The general nodded his thanks. "We cut our honeymoon short to be here this afternoon."

"That will make a wonderful story for your grandchildren." Her expression hadn't changed as she'd examined Alina, her lips still curled and her eyes cold as the air. "I hope you have somewhere warmer for us to meet," she said turning back to the general. "Privately." 

"Of course," the general replied, gesturing towards the waiting cars: some his, some from the American embassy. "After you, Secretary."

* * *

The building across from the general's mansion – _their_ mansion – had completed construction while they toured the country and was now working as the seat of government. It was the opposite of the president's palace in everything other than size; where there had been ornate swooping angles and gaudy statues in the hallways, here the architecture was sparse and modern, where there had been gold mosaics here there were large blank walls. It was a building that was meant to function and intimidate rather than awe and impress. 

The cars pulled up to the government building and Alina and her husband exited, waiting for the secretary before heading in. Their respective entourages accompanied them but the foreign minister turned off down a hall with the secretary's staff. The remaining three of them entered a smaller room, their guards eying each other warily before settling into position right outside.

For all the dark wood interior, the room had windows that let in a large amount of light, even on an autumn late afternoon. A glance at the window told Alina that the glass here was bulletproof – a determination she'd become rather adept at making from a distance – and a small smile twisted her lips at the view. 

The entire city of Os Alta stretched out before them, but the vista was unmistakably centered around a stretch of grey sand on the horizon. 

The door closed behind them and immediately the secretary's smile dropped. She cut a glance to Alina and spoke to the general. "We agreed on a private conversation."

"And my wife and I are happy to have one with you," he replied evenly. He sat on a small sofa, pulling Alina's hand down with him, and gestured to a chair across the way. The secretary hesitated, then sat, crossing one leg over the other. She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, and offered one to the general, who declined. She did not offer one to Alina.

"I'll speak frankly," she began.

"I don’t imagine you could do otherwise."

She looked at him, eyes slightly narrowed, then sighed and leaned back in the chair. "What the _fuck_ , Morozova?"

The general's face shifted in the smallest of ways. Alina had been studying that face carefully and she recognized the expression for what it was, a pleasure at having read the situation correctly. "Eloquent as always, Secretary."

She waved her hand dismissively. "The president is incredibly displeased. What the hell are you thinking? We used to have a good working relationship with Ravka – perhaps you recall that from when you were ambassador."

"I do seem to recall that relationship working for the United States, yes," he acknowledged. "I also recall that it was largely based around keeping Ravka cowed into submission. We're not interested in exploring that particular type of relationship at this time."

"You've made _that_ quite clear." She turned to Alina again, examined her with an up-and-down sweep of her gaze that was anything but warm.

Alina tensed and she felt the pressure on her wrist increase slightly. Her husband spoke in low Ravkan, keeping his gaze on the secretary: "Don't let her get to you."

Secretary Lantsov frowned. "I've brought translators, you know."

"They're not here now," the general answered. "Either way, I hope that my wife and I speaking the language of our people doesn't offend you."

She snorted. "I don't think you'd care if it does."

He leaned back on the sofa, crossed an ankle over his knee, and pulled Alina's hand into his lap. He traced his fingertips over the back of her hand, twisted her wedding ring thoughtfully. It could have been a careless, affectionate gesture. 

No one in the room was fooled.

He watched the secretary for several moments before speaking. "You seem concerned."

"You just murdered an entire military division – I think we're right to be concerned. That's not how it's _done_."

"Ah yes, rather than going after the military with bombs, America prefers to retain its moral high ground by killing civilians with drones." 

She glowered. "They're _terrorists_ and Ravka benefits from that every bit as much as we do."

"It's a good line but your delivery could use some work." His thumbs kneaded Alina's palm. "If you want something, Secretary, you might as well ask for it." 

"Our ambassador's made our desires quite clear. You know damn well what I want." 

"Ask for something you can have." 

Alina's mouth hung slightly open as she watched the exchange, and snapped shut abruptly when she realized that she was the item under discussion. Her husband's fingers closed around hers and she tried to inconspicuously extricate her hand from his grasp; his grip tightened in response.

The secretary shifted in her seat to look at Alina. Her gaze swept over her body and she felt like the secretary had taken her entire measure with that one look – and definitely found her lacking. "You've been here six months now?"

"Eight." Her voice sounded more confident then she felt, but she was suddenly _angry_. Angry that the secretary would speak about her that way, like she was something to be asked for, a thing to be wanted. 

"So you came to Ravka, and in those eight months you managed to develop an entirely new type of weapon of mass destruction. That's an awfully impressive accomplishment for one person, if you don't mind me saying." 

Alina bared her teeth in a smile. "I don't mind you saying it at all."

"You must be exceptionally brilliant."

"I am." The general had lifted her hand to his lips in an imitation of unconscious affection; she felt them now quirk slightly against her skin. "If you’d asked your son before you came he would have told you that."

"I did and he has," the secretary acknowledged, leaning back and folding her arms, "but we'll see what he has to say when he arrives early tomorrow morning."

Alina blinked. "Nikolai's coming?" she asked, with more surprise in her tone than she'd intended to reveal.

The secretary's smile said she caught it. "He is. He mentioned you'd been hard to get hold of." 

Alina kept her face expressionless as she mentally chastised herself for not putting that together earlier. The secretary shifted her attention back to the general. "What we want is to ensure that the Shadow is properly monitored, examined, and never used again." 

The general nodded, unsurprised. "And what's our incentive to work with you?"

"Your incentive? How about us not bombing the shit out of you."

"A strategy that's worked out well for you recently."

"Look," the secretary learned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, "I've been up front with you. Am I pissed off? I'm furious. But I've been honest. I don't want to bomb Ravka and I don't relish the thought of convincing my Commander in Chief that war is the best option. But let me be clear that it is an option. Now, what is it that _you_ want?"

His ghost of a smile said he'd been waiting for this question. "Time."

"Time?"

"We need time to rebuild Ravka, and that means we need to stop spending all our energy fighting our neighbors. Get them to back off and we'll see what we can do for you about inspections."

"We don't control Fjerda and Shu Han," the secretary countered. The general didn't bother pointing out that Fjerda and Shu Han were only able to antagonize Ravka because of American support, and, after a moment, the secretary sighed. "And blueprints?" 

"Not on the table." 

"We'll figure it out eventually, you know." 

The general slid his gaze over to Alina. "Perhaps." 

"Well," she said, standing and smoothing out her skirt as Alina and the general followed suit. "My staff need rest. I assume Grace and your foreign minister have coordinated a time for us to meet in the morning. I'll look forward to seeing the two of you then." Her voice made it clear that it was not something she was, in fact, looking forward to.

"It's been a pleasure, Secretary." His tone was even, not betraying that it had not, in fact, been a pleasure. He gestured towards the door and the secretary looked past him out the window, staring into the distance at the grey sands for a second or two before turning, heels clicking briskly down the hall.

"That could have gone worse," Alina offered after a moment.

"Much worse." He turned to her. "You're ready for tomorrow."

"Of course." He took her hand and she let herself be pulled towards him, let him wrap his arms around her waist. She tilted her head upwards and rested her chin just below his collarbone. His head bent towards her, their mouths positioned so anything they said that didn't make it to the other's ear would be swallowed by their thick clothing. There was something comforting about that, about a space where anything she said would never be as bad as the only other person who could hear it. She kept her voice low.

"Did you know that Nikolai would be coming?"

"We got the list of names requesting diplomatic visas this morning." His breath brushed her ear, pricking her skin. 

"You could have told me."

"If you had spent the day with me instead of at the lab I would have."

She sighed. "I'll go see him before the meeting in the morning."

His body tensed. "You'll do no such thing."

"I will. If I'm to handle the Americans, you have to let me." He didn't answer, so she continued: "I'm beginning to see why they don't trust _you_ , at any rate." 

His grip around her tightened and she felt his chest rise with a deep inhale. He let out the breath. "You'll take both Fedyor and Ivan when you go."

She laughed lightly and gave as much of a deferential nod as the position allowed. " _Da, Soverenyi_." 

* * *

It had been months since Alina had been in the habit of carrying around a wallet. She didn't buy anything usually, and any identification she needed was contained in her military badge. When she arrived the hotel the next morning before dawn, flanked by a guard on either side, she was surprised to be stopped and asked for her passport before going up to the floor on which the American diplomatic mission was staying. 

She blinked several times at the American guard, glanced down at the name pinned onto her uniform. _Of course he can't read it_. He wouldn't be able to read her military identification card, either, and she was considering her options when Fedyor reached around her, producing whatever paperwork was sufficient for the American to raise his eyebrows slightly, speak into his shoulder piece, and let them up the elevator. 

She stood in front of the door he'd indicated and hesitated for just a moment. Last time she'd seen Nikolai had been in very different circumstances, and there was a part of her that was uneasy at the thought of seeing her friend right now. 

But this was what she needed to do. She exhaled and knocked twice, harder than she needed to. When the door opened a few seconds later, she was met by a pair of blue eyes above a smile that carried more sadness than the last time she'd seen it.

"Hey, Alina," said Mal.

* * *

It was entirely too early for this. She'd left the house that morning without coffee, reasoning that she would get some before the meeting with the American entourage and negotiations began in earnest. Now it took her longer to come out of her startled silence than she expected, and she regretted her lack of caffeine deeply. 

"Mal?" When she finally found her voice, it sounded strangled, harsher than she meant it to.

The smile twisted farther. "So you haven't completely forgotten me."

She could sense the guards behind her tensing, so she lowered her voice. "What are you _doing_ here?" 

Mal opened his mouth to respond just as Nikolai stuck his head out of the bathroom behind him, beaming. "Alina! Good of you to come. And you brought friends! I'm barely descent but my guard will let you in."

"Your –" Alina stopped her question mid-sentence and turned back to Mal, glancing down at his outfit for the first time. She took in the suit he was wearing, the microphone, the bulge under the jacket that had probably been what had been making her own guards uneasy this whole time.

She wasn't typically startled into silence twice before breakfast.

Mal opened the door further, allowing Alina and Ivan to enter as Fedyor stationed himself outside. Ivan and Mal sized each other up for a moment, after which Ivan clearly decided to ignore the other guard though Alina was under no illusions that the slightest movement towards Mal's gun wouldn't have Ivan throwing him across the room. She took advantage of the guards' occupation with each other to push past both of them towards the open bathroom door where a fully-clothed Nikolai stood, running his fingers through his still-damp hair. Apparently a lack of hair mousse qualified a Lantsov as _barely descent_. 

"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed.

He glanced at her in the mirror before leaning slightly closer and examining his face. "I could ask you the same question."

"What is Mal doing here?" she ground out.

"He's working for me. He was looking for a new job, and I knew he could hold his own in a fight, so ..." The scar on his cheekbone stood out, a reminder.

Alina was furious. "You brought him as a hostage."

Now Nikolai turned to look at her, and the look he gave her was serious and sad. "He's not the hostage in this room, Alina."

She grit her teeth. "Don't presume to know what's happening."

"You haven't exactly been easy to get a hold of – all I have are presumptions. I'd love some additional clarification."

She inhaled deeply, trying to get her temper under control. She turned back around towards Mal. "Why. Are. You. Here." 

"Whoa," he held up his hands. "That's a lot of hostility for someone who broke up with me in a letter and then never returned any of my emails."

"You didn't _send_ any emails."

"I did," he said, slowly. "Like, a dozen. I'm here," he continued when he saw the confusion crease her brow, "because I work here. Because I knew that was the only way I'd get to see you again."

She opened her mouth, jarred from anger to surprise. _No_. 

"I've learned a lot." He was stumbling over his words now, eager and insistent. "I was bad to you. You were bad to me sometimes, too. And it's okay. We learn, we grow. I just ... I want that to be with you." He dropped his hands to his sides. "I want you to come home."

She looked at Mal, the part of her that felt guilty for leaving him surfacing to her consciousness for the first time in months. There was no reason to bring _him_ of all possible guards other than to try and manipulate her into doing what the Americans wanted. There was a part of her that wondered if he knew he was a hostage, if he was willing. Because there was no way that he could come here asking her to go back with him, not now that –

She whirled back to Nikolai, who was now appropriately preened and leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. "You didn't _tell him_?" she hissed.

"To be fair," Nikolai pointed out, "you never told _me_."

"Told me what?" Mal asked.

She sighed and let out a low curse, rubbing her hand over her face. It _was_ far too early, but there wouldn't have been enough coffee in the world for this. She turned back towards Nikolai's guard. "Mal, I'm married."

There was a second when she thought he would laugh. He cast a glance back to Nikolai, then back to Alina. Then Ivan. "You're – what?" He blinked twice, then his face went dark. "I'll kill him." 

Ivan's arm was halfway to his gun when Alina's raised hand stopped his movement. 

Nikolai sighed dramatically. "You might," he suggested belatedly, "not want to threaten the leader of Ravka around his bodyguards."

Mal's jaw went slack for a moment, and the look he gave her betrayed exactly how much he'd been hurting since she'd gone. "You left me for him?" he whispered.

As painful as it was, she didn't have the mental bandwidth to handle this. She had things she needed to do and she couldn't stand here, watching at her past look at her like a thing equal parts terror and beauty, couldn't be _distracted_. She was tired and angry and didn't have time for this and she wanted. fucking. coffee. 

She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. "No, Mal. I left you for me." She turned to Ivan. "And I think it's time for us to go now."

She was several doors down the hallway by the time she heard Nikolai shout, "Alina, wait!"

She turned to see him jogging after her, alone. "I'm sorry," he said, and she stared, arms crossed. "I'm _sorry_. But he's not a hostage." He lifted his hands at Alina's raised eyebrow. "Really. It was his idea, but it was a shitty thing for me to do even so. Can you blame me for trying though? You come out here and this –" he gestured widely, "all this happens and ..."

"And what?"

Nikolia's lips were pressed together, and when he spoke, his voice was low enough that Ivan tensed at not being able to hear what was being said. "And I'm worried about you. It's not too late, you know. You can still come back to America."

She snorted. "Speaking of hostages."

"You wouldn't be one."

"I wouldn't be free either."

He made an ambiguous gesture. "Freedom is relative."

She narrowed her eyes. "Don't PATRIOT Act me."

Her lab partner gave a rueful smile. "I miss you and I want you to be safe. People have done worse things."

The look he gave her said he meant exactly what she suspected he did. She held his gaze.

After a minute Nikolai sighed, dropped his stance and opened his arms. Both Ivan and Fedyor tensed and Alina hesitated for a moment; she stepped towards him and let him fold his arms around her. He took a deep breath.

"Alina," he whispered into her hair, "what have you done?"

* * *

The wind picked up and the rays of sun slanted towards her as she made her way back to the government building. She approached her husband, who was standing on the sidewalk, phone to his ear, flanked by two guards. He turned when he heard her approach, his stare cold. Angry.

"Send them back," he said into his phone. His voice was low and more dangerous for it. "Now."

She couldn't decide if she was surprised that he knew that Nikolai had brought Mal. She smiled lightly. "You can't return diplomats as if they were misdelivered mail. Aside from which, didn't you issue them all visas?"

He hung up the phone, his jaw tight. "Visas can be rescinded. For them to deliberately try to manipulate you into –"

"Deliberate manipulation in politics? Someone call the newspaper." She cocked her head. "How did you find out about Mal? Did you have the place bugged?"

"No, I had someone competent look at the _fucking visa list_."

His nostrils flared and she laughed quietly. "I hope you didn't kill anyone over that mistake."

"Then you should have gotten here several minutes ago." His jaw twitched. 

It was just a retort, a throw away comment. Something meant to distract her from his slipping composure. He was struggling to regain control in a way that she had almost never seen him do outside of bed, certainly not on the sidewalk. A thought occurred to her and she stepped closer, fingering the lapels of his suit. "You're jealous."

"I'm not."

"You _are_." She bit her cheek. Underneath her fingers his chest moved evenly with his breath, but even through his coat and the thick fabric of his suit the tension was obvious. "But you don't need to be."

An expression flickered across his face too fast for her to read it. "Is that so."

"I can handle myself, Aleksander." She moved closer. "I can do this. _We_ can do this. Ravka needs us to." She held his gaze, silent and serious, before leaning in farther and lifting herself slightly towards him, their faces close. "And right now," she whispered, "I need coffee." 

A moment with no movement, and then she felt his body deliberately relax, the neutral expression telling her that she'd gotten him back from whatever brink he was on. He ran his hand lightly over the kerchief she'd arranged over her hair and let out an exhale that wasn't quite a laugh. "Then let's get you some."

* * *

By the time the meeting began, Alina was appropriately caffeinated and had another cup of coffee in her hands. Outside the meeting room, Alina shook hands with Grace – the Secretary's chief of staff – and several other advisors, including Nikolai and a couple translators. The American staff and their guards dwarfed the Ravkan contingent – from their side it was just Alina, the foreign minister, the general, Genya, and a couple guards. The secretary glanced around at them. "That's it?"

"No one else could be spared," the general explained, nodding towards Genya, "and my own chief of staff can't stay. We're in the process of rebuilding our country, and managing our neighbors is proving to be a tedious task."

"Because they're afraid you'll bomb them into oblivion?"

"We've made no such threats," Minister Zhuralev interjected.

"Not explicitly," Secretary Lantsov agreed as they began filing through the door. Mal followed Nikolai closely, and Alina stepped aside to let the two of them through. 

The room was windowless with a large oval table, and the staff on each side began the long and strangely political process of being seated appropriately. 

Guards lined the walls. Alina didn't look at Mal, but she could feel the heat of his stare – and if she could, she was certain the general could, too.

Genya directed the Americans into seats, and then switched to Ravkan for the foreign minister. A translator leaned over and repeated in English what she had said for the secretary's benefit.

Genya stopped. Blinked. "Is he going to repeat everything I say?"

He dutifully translated that as well, and a huge smile broke out across her face. " _Everything?_ Does that mean if I tell the story about the time –" 

"Thank you, Safin," the general interrupted, nodding her dismissal.

Genya shrugged lightly and switched to English, adding, "You would all have enjoyed the end of that," before heading out the door.

"Let's get started," Grace began. "Ravka's actions in the last month or so are clearly something that we can't risk having happen again – a display like that can generate a lot of problems for everyone. And that's not something you need us to come here and tell you." The general nodded in acknowledgement. "We want to know exactly what it's going to take to make sure that this weapon is never used again."

"It sounds like you care more about the means employed than the results," the foreign minister observed from her seat next to Alina. "It's not like you were particularly fond of _Prezident_ Vakhrov."

The secretary cut in. "Whatever we feel about the outcome, yes, we take enormous issue with your methods. But our concern here is making sure that the Shadow is properly secured and that we have mechanisms in place to prevent Ravka using it – or the threat of it – to destabilize the entire region."

"The region hasn't been stable for years," the general pointed out, "in large part due to American intervention in the local arms race. Somehow it's fine for you to arm our neighbors, but it's destabilizing when we arm ourselves."

"We obviously disagree with your characterization," Grace replied, frowning at him. "Pointing fingers typically isn't productive, but it's worth noting that _we've_ now made our intentions clear." 

"Hardly," the general replied. "You've left out an important part of what you're here for. You want the Shadow for yourself."

"For international security –"

"Bullshit," Alina said, causing the Secretary and Grace to fix her with identical surprised stares. "You want it to arm Fjdera and Shu Han and get rid of the only real threat Ravka can make."

That much hadn't been hard for her to figure out, and the secretary's slight smile let her know she had been right. "Ravka threatening its neighbors isn't in anyone's interest."

"Except ours," Alina replied, ignoring Nikolai's slight flinch when he realized the plural did not include him. "Not to mention that much of the technology was developed primarily as a mechanism to bring solar power to the villages here and is about to go into widespread production."

"We can't allow that," Grace said.

"You don't have a choice," Minister Zhuralev snapped.

Alina held up a hand. "Look, I understand your concern. If we can make the Shadow out of largely inert materials made dangerous by stripping off part of a cell that we're about to distribute all throughout the country, who knows who could get hold of that? It's not something we want either – we don't like the idea of making it available to Fjerda or Shu Han, or even arm the next civil war."

One of the translators rolled their eyes, clearly aware of the irony that the last coup was taking pains to avoid giving the next one their weapons. 

"But?" Grace prompted.

"But," Alina continued, "over half of our citizens are currently living with only sporadic electricity. It's untenable, it's dangerous, and there's some precedent for making allowances when parts of weapons can be used to significantly better the lives of the population. You recently made a deal with Iran around its nuclear reactors for this reason, for instance."

The secretary's face was grim. "You're not going to win me over by arguing that I should go through that again. And even more, Iran hadn't already _used_ an atomic bomb before we made that deal."

"You're not suggesting," the general said evenly, though from the corner of her eye Alina caught his jaw clench, "that we let Ravkans suffer when we have the means to provide power for their homes, schools, and hospitals." 

She touched her fingers to his – lightly, visibly – and she saw him relax. Or, at least, saw him move in a way that other people would perceive as such. A part of her thought she should be frightened by how easily she had slipped into this role with him, how simple it was for her to play against his reputation as a monster, sliding into the grooves in the good-cop-bad-cop routine like it was something they'd rehearsed.

How easy it would be for this to become something other than an act. 

 "I think," she said slowly, focusing again, "that there's another option. That is, if this is really a priority for you, Secretary."

The secretary smiled wanly. "It sounds like you're about to ask for money." 

Alina smiled back. "We only need to use the part of Solnyshko that is need for the Shadow because the solar cells otherwise won't have enough efficiently to support a village. If we don't have to rely on just solar power – if we can generate electricity based on a combination of wind, water, _and_ solar energy – then we can give up some of the efficiency. And most of the danger."

This, Alina had decided, had been the plan all along. Once she had stopped thinking like just a scientist and started thinking like a politician, it had been obvious to her that the significant expense was the only thing stopping this from being implemented with even commercially available solar cells.

"That sounds too complicated to work," observed Grace.

"It's not. But don't trust me on it." She nodded towards Nikolai. "You brought him to understand what's going on, so let him. Give me a few weeks, and I'll show him how we'll do it. And he can even investigate our safeguards for the Shadow while he's there." 

The secretary raised her eyebrows. "You know that just safeguards aren't sufficient."

"They're a start. And it will show good faith that we hope you'll show in return."

She pressed her lips together. "In addition to the funding, I'm assuming."

"Get our neighbors to back off. And for fuck's sake stop _arming_ them."

"You're asking for a change in foreign policy that's going to require congressional approval. Congress goes on recess in just a few weeks," Grace explained.

"You'd better get started then," the general responded, leaning back in his seat. "Do you have any more complaints, or shall we start working out the details?"

* * *

There were many, many more cups of coffee before the day had ended, but a dozen hours later a preliminary agreement had been hammered out. Though it would take another few days before any terms were final, the shape of the discussions was clear: Alina would spend the next few weeks developing a prototype of a combination clean energy system, with promises of sharing the development specs more widely contingent on American approval for funding. The secretary would continue her tour of the region and then the senate, with a promise of reduction in harassment from the north and the south within the month. Nikolai would stay in Ravka for the foreseeable future, keeping track of the progress on Solnyshko and the energy system, inspecting the Shadow.

The day wore on and the general twined Alina's fingers with his own, resting them on the table as the last bits were hammered out. She was conscious of the heat of his skin against her, and stared directly at the secretary, not meeting Mal's eyes, nor Nikolai's. She focused on Ravka, on the solution.

On getting what she wanted.

* * *

It was well into the night by the time she and the general returned to their house and made their way down a darkened corridor. When he held out a keyring to her, she took it and unlocked the door.

The room was large, a polished wood table in the center with several more comfortable chairs in corners, maps and bookshelves lining the wall. She walked in, turning on lamps as she did, examining the materials closely. The shelves were full of books on military strategy and history – most in English, some in Ravkan. A few in Fjerdan. Maps of Ravka lined the walls; these she was familiar with. They were followed by maps of Shu Han and Fjerda, in all the painstaking details she remembered from poring over maps of her own country. 

"This is the warroom," she said. 

"It's your warroom," he corrected. "Mine are elsewhere." She snorted – of course he would have several. "You'll notice that the maps are empty." 

She hadn't noticed, but as she examined it she realized that it didn't have any of the typical markings she would have expected for a military map – nothing indicating where the bases were, troop movements, anything. 

"Start studying," he continued, "and fill that one out. When you've figured out where each of our bases and Fjerda's are, then you can start commanding." 

She nodded slowly, still examining the map. He came to stand behind her, looked over her shoulder. The space between them now that no one else was present was deliberate, tense. He kept his voice low.

"You did well today." 

She didn't reply but turned towards him and leaned back against the map. "Who did you have read my email?"

He blinked. It looked, for a moment, like he would deny it. But only for a moment. "Genya."

She'd thought about it occasionally throughout the day; it hadn't taken all of her brilliance to figure out that Mal had, in fact, emailed her and that the general had been responsible for ensuring she didn't get those letters. "Did you read them before she deleted them?"

"No." He examined her for a moment. "You're not angry."

"Would it matter if I was?"

"Not really." He rested his hands on the wall to either side of her head and leaned in towards her. "But that's not a reason for you not to be."

"You've done worse things than have someone read my email." She traced a fingertip down his jaw, followed the line of his jugular. "But don't make the mistake of doing it again."

He quirked an eyebrow in acknowledgement before wrapping his fingers around her hand and removing it from his neck. She tilted her head back against the wall as his eyes searched hers. 

That look, again. 

"You've changed," he observed finally.

She lifted one side of her lips. "Too much for you?" She kept her tone light because the answer to the question mattered, because she needed to know that he still believed that he was the one in control.

He released her hand at her side and traced his own fingertips down the side of her face – gentle, almost reverent – before leaning in slightly and pressing his lips to her forehead. "Not at all."

  



	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooorry this took so long to get up! It got ... much longer than I thought it would.

After three days of negotiations involving nearly forty hours of discussions and countless cups of coffee, the American delegation finally signed an agreement with the Ravkan government. The outlines were clear: Alina would spend the next few weeks both creating a prototype of an energy system combining solar, wind, and water energy as well as ensuring that the Shadow was properly secured against misuse ("Both from outside of the Ravkan government and from you two," the secretary had emphasized, looking pointedly at Alina and the general). The secretary and most of her staff would return to the United States to seek congressional approval that would give her more discretion in her dealings with Fjerda and Shu Han. They'd reconvene in three weeks, and if the prototype of the energy system, the security measures around access to the Shadow, and the congressional approval all worked out, they would start negotiating in earnest the things they really cared about: energy in the villages and peace on the borders for Alina, and cessation of production of the Shadow for the Americans.

The morning after the negotiations ended, Alina woke as the first hint of sun hazed from behind the mountains to find the general long gone. She rolled out of bed and into her uniform, tying a kerchief around her hair as she headed into the kitchen in search of coffee. She startled when she realized she wasn't alone, pressed her hand to her heart when she recognized the intruder.

"Genya! I didn't expect to find you in my kitchen."

Genya winked before taking a big bite of a croissant. "They never do."

Alina sighed and collected herself before going to cabinet and looking for a thermos. "Isn't it a little early for assassin humor?"

"Early? I got woken up for work hours ago. You and the general must not keep the same sleep schedule."

"Because I do, in fact, sleep? Yeah." As she poured her coffee, a thought occurred to her. "Do you live here?"

"Like live-live? No, I just come by for the food. It's way better than what the cafeteria has." She shrugged as she took another bite of the croissant, then walked over to Alina and adjusted the kerchief over her hair. "But come on, let me walk you to the lab. It will give me an excuse to be late for my meeting with Madam Secretary."

"Things are going that well, huh?" Alina asked as they left the house, Fedyor trailing a short distance behind. She was relieved that she was no longer the one dealing with the secretary; she'd done well – better than she'd thought she would if she was being honest – but she had enough on her mind without needing to manage the American delegation for her husband.

"Oh, things are fine." Genya waved a hand dismissively. "The secretary will be leaving this afternoon – not for long enough, but at least a while – and we're sending the rest of them on a tour of the country for a couple weeks. Give them a chance to understand what Ravka's really about before they start poking their noses in everything. Give _you_ a chance to get everything prepared, though we're all politely not acknowledging that that's the real purpose." She glanced at Alina. "You have that under control, right?"

Alina let the steam from the small opening of the thermos warm her face. "Don't worry." 

They walked in silence for a block. "He told me you found out about me reading your email," Genya said finally.

Alina took a sip of her coffee. "I did." 

Genya crossed her arms in front of her chest and exhaled. "It wasn't like I read everything, you know."

"Just enough to delete any messages from my ex-boyfriend?"

"Yeah." A beat. "Well, and to assess how much of a threat he really was."

"And what did you decide?" 

There was a sidelong glance. "He's pretty poetic."

"That's not an answer and I wouldn't know because you deleted all those emails before I saw them." 

"Point taken. I'm not surprised that he tried to show up, I suppose, just that he managed to get here – I didn't think he'd have the resources. He's better looking in person than I had thought, too. You do know how to pick them; it must be something about the facial structure –" 

" _Genya_."

"Okay, okay." She looped her arm through Alina's. "But if you talk to him, let him know that at least someone appreciated his poetry, and tell him that I'm sorry the letters didn't make their way to you."

"Are you though? Sorry?"

Genya thought for a moment then exhaled loudly. "I'm not sorry for how things turned out." She examined the branches above them as if they contained something interesting. "But I'm sorry I lied to you."

It was the best that Alina could have hoped for. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

"We've got plans underway for setting up the Shadows you asked for last week," Eva explained as she and Alexei led Alina (and Fedyor) down to the basement. They passed a guard who verified each of their badges with a scanner and palmed their way into the secured area. The room had more tables than there had been previously, plans taped on each explaining what would be there eventually. They led her into a second room with a similar arrangement, letting her read the papers in silence for a few minutes.

"The smaller bombs you requested aren't going to be much use," Alexei said. "We were running the numbers and their impact radius will be just two or three meters, max."

"It isn't worth it for the added security risk," Eva added, crossing her arms. "They're almost small enough to smuggle out of here without a problem." 

"No one's smuggling them out of here." Alina nodded to the security measures that were already in place – she could just see the lasers when she knew what she was looking for, and it wasn't hard for her to guess at a few security measures that had been set up but weren't visible. It would be, hopefully, far harder to guess at the next few that would be implemented. "Ana's not going to let that happen. And besides, the materials used to make them are all common enough anyway – without the photon filters something that size is hardly even lethal, right?"

"It's not the type of bomb _we'd_ use," Alexei replied, "but for most people 'hardly even lethal' still constitutes a reasonable threat." 

They talked through their plans for the next few weeks, and they showed her how they were planning to assemble the copies of the Shadow she'd asked for. 

"This looks good. Is there anything else you need from me?" Alina asked after an hour of discussion.

"The funding and people you promised," responded Eva.

"On their way. Anything else?"

The twins glanced at each other, debating. "You're having us create weapons that can kill thousands, tens of thousands of people," Alexei said quietly. "How about an assurance that things aren't going to get out of control?"

"Did you ask the general for that when you built the Shadow in the first place?" Their frowns answered the question for her. "Things won't get out of control," she reassured them as they headed up to the lab to rejoin the rest of the division. "At least, not any more than they are already." 

* * *

The sun had already set before Alina had a chance to sit down with Zoya and Harshaw. 

"You've managed to turn the entire division upside down in the time that you've been back," Zoya grumbled.

Alina shrugged off her lieutenant's tone. "Everything was more or less upside down when I got here." 

"War does that," she said bitterly.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." Alina settled down on a seat facing the two of them, placing her hands carefully in her lap. "I saw how bad things were over this past week, in the villages. It's worse than I'd thought." 

"Worse than you'd thought?" Zoya was incredulous. "You've been here for like seventeen fucking days. I grew _up_ in one of those villages." 

She inhaled and managed to reply calmly. "You're right, I haven't seen everything you have. But I'm here now, and we're on the same side."

"Which side is that?" the lieutenant snapped.

"Ravka's." Alina rubbed her eyes again and vaguely wondered if she should come up with a hand signal for Fedyor to make an excuse to get her coffee. "Reliable electricity will make a huge difference to the villages; I know I don't need to tell you that. I bring it up because when I saw the towns, I realized that they have rivers and wind tunnels. We can make an integrated solar-wind-river energy system that will give Harshaw's team the flexibility to make less horrifically enormous batteries and will be more practical than just solar power alone."

Zoya rolled her eyes. "Oh, great idea. Except that it's way too expensive."

"I've gotten funding for it. From the Americans," Alina added with a half smile. "But we need a prototype in three weeks."

Zoya's eyes narrowed. "Three weeks is –"

Harshaw interrupted. "We'll do it." 

Zoya glared at Harshaw, and he looked back at her. Something passed between them that Alina couldn't interpret, though she had her own guesses. Whatever it was, after a few seconds Zoya nodded slowly. "Okay."

Alina exhaled. "Just tell me what you need."

Zoya narrowed her eyes. "I don't know what your game is, _Sardzhent_ , but I don't have a reason to trust you. The general tricked us into supporting creation of the Shadow – how do I know that _you're_ not the one setting up traps now?" 

"You don't." Alina stood to go. "But this isn't one. Can you two set this up in the next couple weeks and then pass off the rest of the coordination to Nadia? I'm going to need you for something else."

"Is _that_ the trap?" Harshaw asked. 

Alina smiled, mostly teeth. "Definitely."

* * *

It was their first meal alone since their marriage – in fact, it was their first meal alone _ever_. Unlike on their honeymoon, there was no need for their guards to follow them closely in their own home, and unlike the last few days of negotiations that had gone on long enough that Alina had only had a couple hours before she fell asleep reading, she'd actually gotten home at a reasonable hour tonight. She had walked up to their house to find the general returning at the same time. 

She didn't believe in coincidences, when it came to her husband.

He'd ushered her into one of the dining rooms and she found a table set for two, food neatly arrayed and still steaming. The meal reminded her of how they'd eaten on the flight over to Ravka – simple, well-prepared, and, much to her relief, with a noticeable lack of herring. The company may have been dubious, but the food was excellent.

She could live with that.

Alina had eaten quickly, and now she propped a chin on her elbow and watched the general carefully slice and tine a roasted carrot. 

"Is there dessert?" 

"No."

"You have seven different types of sugar in your kitchen – more sugar than thermoses, which is going to a be a problem, by the way. Why no dessert if you like it so much?"

An eyebrow lifted slightly. "In addition to sugar, I have self-control."

She rolled her eyes. Her foot bounced up and down as she watched him eat and she wondered if he was eating deliberately slowly. She waited until he was almost done before she spoke again. "Aren't you going to ask me how my day went?" 

He looked up at her, a beet partway to his mouth. "How was your day." 

"Fine." 

He waited another second, food still suspended above his plate, before letting the fork continue on its path. "I'm glad I asked."

"We're going to have dozens of copies of the Shadow by the time the Americans return. It should give us good leverage in the negotiations." He nodded in approval. "How was your day?" she asked politely. "Kill anyone?"

He put down his silverware and placed his elbows on the table, leaning towards her. "It's a war, Alina."

"What will you say when you don't have that as an excuse anymore?"

The muscles of his jaw twitched. "There is always a war. The type of battles we fight may change, but there is always a war."

There was a bitter taste in her mouth and nothing for her to say in response, not least because the next war would be one she wanted. She shook her head lightly instead. "Charming, as usual."

"If you wanted a charming husband, you should have married someone else. But you chose to marry for revenge." He made a gesture as if to indicate this was something she had brought upon herself, as if she'd had other options at the time.

She laughed. "And here I thought I'd married you for your looks."

"A common mistake." He stood from the table, and the look he gave her wasn't quite one she could read. "But I believe we both have work to do."

There was a moment where he seemed like he might say something else, but he turned and left the room. She cricked her neck, exhaled, and went to begin her studies.

* * *

It was another few days before Davna was ready to start making more of the filters that were needed to complete the Shadow. The security mechanisms keeping the inert parts of the bombs out of the wrong hands had been completed, but ensuring that the filters stayed where they were put would be much harder. Alina found Davna and Ana when she came into the lab that morning. "Do you have a plan for keeping the filters secure?"

"Sure I do," Ana said, flipping her switchblade back and forth between her fingers. "But I do feel obligated to reiterate my _security through obscurity_ motto and point out that the best way to keep them out of the wrong hands is to _not_ mass produce them. Which is the opposite of what you've asked Davna to do." 

"It is," Davna confirmed.

Alina shrugged in agreement. "We do a lot of things that make us less secure physically in order to secure more options politically." 

Ana gave a low whistle. "It sounds like you've been spending too much time in meetings."

She couldn't disagree with that. Davna left to go speak with someone several workstations away, and Ana studied Alina, flipping her switchblade.

"It's interesting that you asked me to do security, you know."

Alina kept her face neutral, replied cautiously. "Why's that?"

"I hadn't realized your clearance was so high."

She exhaled. "It's ... not, quite. There are still some intelligence things I don't have access to, but it's not too hard to fill in the missing pieces when I can see everything else." 

When Alina learned that her marriage had granted her access to nearly all the personnel files in the military, she'd spent a day or two agonizing over whether or not to make use of their availability; it felt like an invasion of privacy, but in the end she decided that it was hardly likely to be the worst thing she would do. She had learned a lot about the people she worked with through their files (an extensive amount for some of them – Harshaw's military record began when he was _eleven_ ) but she'd also run into a few situations where she didn't have access to files and was forced to figure it out on her own.

She'd been right, then, that Ana had been in some sort of intelligence unit when she wasn't driving tanks. It had been a bit of a gamble entrusting her with security for the Shadow, a test of Alina's own that she thought might tell her something. Ana had more than passed it, confirming her suspicions.

Ana nodded and thought for a minute. "I'd be careful, if I were you."

Alina snorted. "Just because I married a dictator who killed hundreds of people two weeks before the wedding?"

A smile tugged at a corner of Ana's lips, though she didn't seem amused. "He's not the one I'm worried about," she replied finally, flipping the switchblade closed and standing.

By the time Alina came up with a response, Ana had already walked away.

* * *

Alina was working her way through the books in her warroom at the rate of two or three a night. Keeping that pace would mean that she wouldn't finish for a few months, but she was careful to frontload the important ones first, skimming aggressively when the authors pontificated about military strategy, paying close attention to the specific examples. There was a lot to learn, and she was just at the beginning of it.

She'd never studied so hard in her life. 

When the general had initially told her that he'd help her start commanding the war with Fjerda once she had filled out the maps with current military bases, she'd imagined it as some sort of logic puzzle: the land is shaped this way and so troops are stationed here, there's a city across the river so you want to be at least a certain distance away. But she soon realized that there was more to filling out the maps than that, that the history of the countries added an entire level to the topography – she'd never thought so much about _time_ as a dimension as she did now. She'd figure out where it made sense for Fjerda to station troops only to realize that the way Ravka had undoubtedly responded would mean that everything would have changed. She became intimately acquainted with the methods of erasing her carefully drawn indications without ruining the rest of the paper.

The maps blurred in front of her eyes as she struggled to focus, but over time they gradually became more clear, organized within her mind. She was able to fit the events of the wars that had haunted the country – not just for the last few decades, but the last century and a half – into a lens that allowed her to zoom out on the region as a whole. She understood the lines that divided Ravka from its neighbors, saw how they'd been shaped by land and politics and blood, carved out through negotiations and sabotage. 

After just a couple weeks, she began to look at a map and see not just the moment in time the map represented – for it was never more than a single moment, she was coming to learn – but the march of history that came before it. When she was lucky, she caught a glimpse of the moments after. 

And when she was _very_ lucky, she caught a glimpse of her revenge.

She worked every evening until her eyes burned, then drooped, then finally closed. Until a familiar voice woke her and pale hands helped her out of her chair, directing her into bed where she didn't have to think, didn't have to strategize, didn't have to plan. When fingers twined in her hair after a day of developing war and a night of reading about it, she could lose herself in the touch, could let her own hands be comforted by the alternating coolness and warmth of his skin. 

If she'd been able to think, she might have thought about the man in bed with her, about the lies he'd told and the people he'd killed. She might have thought about her family, her own anger burning as steadily as the rest of her. She might have thought about Solnyshko, or war, or revenge. 

But usually she was too tired to really think at all.

* * *

The weeks went by in a blur – her days were in the lab, either coordinating with Zoya and Harshaw's work on the energy system for the villages or working with Ana, the twins, and Davna on the production of the Shadow and the security around it. There was a lot to be done – some of which she wanted to do, some of which she had to – but it hadn't left her any time to focus on anything else. Those plans would have to wait a little bit longer, but she could be patient. She'd have to be.

Genya had added extensions onto the American delegation's tour of the country so that their return would coincide with the secretary's next visit. "They'll probably want to spend one or two days getting tours of our beaches on the west coast," Genya had suggested. 

"It's November and we're in Ravka. They'll freeze," Alina had pointed out. 

Genya had nodded: "Three days, then."

On the morning of the secretary's return, Alina woke a couple hours before the sun rose and lay in bed for several minutes, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

"Contemplating?"

She was almost startled enough to scream, but her consciousness registered both the voice and the fact that she wasn't nearly dressed enough for guards to come running into the room just in time to silence herself. Once her heart rate had slowed, she sighed and propped her elbows up behind her, glaring at the corner of the room where the general sat on the chair, one ankle cross the other knee, dim light from his phone illuminating his face for a moment before he locked the screen. 

"Please tell me that you don't just sit there watching me sleep every morning."

"Not typically." In the shadows, she saw a movement, which she guessed was him holding up his phone. "I got some news and was about to wake you." She grunted and let herself fall back onto the bed, heard the sound of footsteps approaching and then felt the mattress dip as he perched next to her. "Congress approved the necessary changes while the secretary was on her flight over here – the exact implementations are up in the air but it leaves the secretary a lot of room in dealing with our neighbors the way she needs to." 

She rubbed her hands over her face, trying to wake up. "That sounds good." 

"It's impressive she was able to get it through congress at all. And something with that level of flexibility – it's clever."

Alina was surprised at the tone of his voice, that it held something bordering on admiration. She wondered if this was how monsters spoke about one another behind closed doors. 

She rolled onto her side and touched the base of the lamp near her, giving just enough light to see him. "What about the funding for my energy system?"

"I heard they'll come with some preliminary numbers. But if you make something compelling enough I would believe they'll fund it regardless."

"Why? A humanitarian gesture?"

"People will see it that way." He used the back of his fingers to brush hair back from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear, almost affectionate. His eyes met hers and something flickered across his face – his features softened, warmed by the lamplight. A second later they'd settled back into their usual mask and he stood. "Go shower; we'll want to leave soon."

When he reached the door, she called after him. "You haven't asked." 

He turned. "About what?" 

"The work I'm doing. How it's going. When I was developing Solnyshko you used to grill me on it every day."

"I needed to understand it for the Shadow."

"And now?"

He cocked his head slightly. "And now our incentives are aligned enough that I trust you'll do the right thing."

She lay in bed a few more minutes after he had gone, thinking about trust and what it meant. 

Thinking about the right thing, and what it was.

* * *

The American delegation that greeted them when they walked into the meeting room looked significantly worse for wear. Though the secretary maintained her composure – she was a Lantsov, after all – her chief of staff looked like she hadn't slept for the better part of the last few weeks. The group that had been touring the country had a sullen resentfulness that they hadn't had when they left.

Nikolai and Mal both looked up at Alina when she entered the room – their cheeks were windburnt and they gripped cups of coffee like it was their last hope at warmth. Alina bit the inside of her cheek to stifle a laugh at Nikolai's slightly rumpled hair, a nod to what would have no doubt devolved into dishevelment in a lesser person. The cheek-biting also helped with the jealousy she felt at the realization that he had already seen far more of the country than she was ever likely to. They all shook hands – the diplomats, anyway – and took their now-familiar seats around the table.

The general spoke once everyone was seated. "It sounds like you've had a productive few weeks, Secretary."

"It does sound that way," she replied, then turned to Alina. "I hope you've been half as productive."

Alina smiled. "I think you'll be delighted with the progress we've made on a prototype of the integrated energy system. We're getting good results while completely avoiding using the part of Solynshko that can be repurposed for the Shadow." 

The secretary shook her head in a dismissive gesture. "That's all wonderful – what about securing the weapon itself?"

"That, too." Ana's work there had been, as Alina had hoped, exceptional – security was mostly a game of tradeoffs and Ana had struck just the balance Alina had been looking for. 

"We'll want to send an inspector to see what measures have been implemented," Grace said.

"Of course." 

"They'll need access to the actual weapons," she added.

"The agreement doesn't specify that," Minister Zhuralev corrected.

"How do you expect us to know what you've implemented if you won't show us?" Grace snapped. The secretary's chief of staff's distaste for Ravka was obvious; Alina wondered if she was unhappy no matter where she went or if there was something particular about the country that brought it out in her.

The general ignored Grace's tone, replying evenly. "We _expect_ you to negotiate for it."

"In the meantime," Alina added, "I've brought blueprints of the specs for the energy system if you'd like to see them."

Grace looked at her like Alina had just revealed herself to be a particular sort of idiot. "We don't want to see them. You can show Nikolai this afternoon and he'll give us his opinion." 

Alina had the rolls of paper halfway to the table, but she turned and put them back on the floor beside her, a little disappointed. She hadn't anticipated that anyone other than Nikolai would be able to read them, anyway, but she _had_ been looking forward to seeing them try.

"You're no doubt aware that I've been granted a large amount in latitude in my dealings with Fjerda and Shu Han," the secretary said. "So let's start getting into specifics. You want your neighbors to stop attacking you, and we want you to have fewer weapons of mass destruction." She laced her fingers on the table, leaned onto her forearms. "Tell me exactly what you want, and I'll tell you what that will cost you in terms of production of the Shadow."

The general's arm draped around the back of Alina's chair, his fingertips brushing her shoulder. "Alright," he said. "Let's get started."

* * *

Alina didn't have much to do for the rest of the meeting; her work had been in generating the leverage they needed, so once the negotiations started in earnest she had mostly been able to sit back and watch the foreign minister and the general work to get what they wanted. There would be inspections of the security systems around the Shadow later that week that she'd have to deal with, and the group of them steadily talked their way in circles to get to a point of halting current production of any more of the filters for the Shadow in anticipation of Fjerdan and Shu Han troops withdrawing from each of the borders. 

Nikolai had stared at Alina throughout the entire thing, on the edge of speaking all morning. Now she walked him to the lab, an uncomfortable silence between them, Fedyor and Mal trailing behind, keeping a careful distance from the two of them and from one another. 

A gust of wind blew the hood off her head and she pulled it back up, tightening the strings on either side. Nikolai shoved his hands in his pockets and huddled against the wind.

"How was your trip?" Alina finally asked. 

"Cold. You weren't kidding about this place."

She smiled a little, in spite of herself. "You probably can't wait to leave, huh?"

There were a few moments of silence, and when she glanced at Nikolai she found him looking back at her, eyes wide and earnest. "Alina, we're not leaving."

She blinked. "What?"

"We're not leaving you here."

She felt anger begin to rise in her chest. "I already told you I'm not going back to –"

"You're not listening." He gestured back to Mal. "We talked it over, the last few weeks. We know you're staying. And we're not leaving you here alone." 

She glanced back at her own guard, lifted her lips slightly at Nikolai. "I'm hardly alone."

"And we're not leaving." He shrugged. "Alina, I don't know what's been happening. I have guesses, but if you won't tell me that's all I have. You can take responsibility all you want and you can fool the president and Grace and maybe even my mom, but the one thing I _do_ know for certain is that you didn't build the Shadow to kill all those people."

She gritted her teeth. "I _did_."

"You didn't." He gave a smile that looked more like a grimace. "I don't know why you're doing this and I don't know why you're staying. But we're staying with you."

"There isn't a place for you here."

He perked up at this. "Oh, on the contrary. I was brought here as the solar energy expert, and if you recall, and there's a lot happening in that that area. Other than the Shadow, the work you're doing on energy has the potential to change the world; even if isn't exactly how I imagined us building Solnyshko, I'm not missing the chance to work with you again."

When she looked back at the guards behind them, Mal was staring back at her, his face a mirror expression of Nikolai's from earlier. "And Mal?"

"I'll let him speak for himself, but I'm not the only one who believes in you." He was silent for a moment, debating, before he continued, carefully. "And it looks like you could use all the friends you can get."

She hadn't expected this. Her throat constricted and her voice came out as a whisper, a protest she had to make. "You shouldn't stay here." 

"But we will." Another gust of wind blew towards them and they ducked their heads into it. When it passed, he turned back to her, hair tousled, his signature smile returned to his face. "So are we slogging through this together or what?"

She blinked hard a few times, more grateful than she could say, and smiled through a neat coating of tears that she would attribute to the wind if anyone asked. Even if neither of them understood what had happened, the fact that they were here and _staying_ –

It was another few seconds before she trusted her voice enough to reply. "I'd like that," she said.

* * *

By the time they made their way to the area of the lab where Alina's workstation was, the rest of the R&D group was gathered around the tables and stared at the four of them with open interest as they approached. The guards stationed themselves each to one side, and Alina gestured to her former lab partner and addressed the group.

"This is Nikolai Lantsov. He's going to be inspecting our clean energy system."

"This is the inspector?" Zoya had switched to Ravkan but made no effort to hide her gaze sweeping up and down his body before sucking in a hard breath between her teeth. "Perhaps this inspection would be better done privately. Just him and me."

Eva raised her eyebrows. "I'm not sure his bodyguard would like that."

Zoya cut her gaze over to Mal, looking him over in a way that made Alina's stomach clench uncomfortably. She nodded in approval. "He can come, too."

One glance at Nikolai's smirk showed that even though he didn't speak Ravkan, body language was allowing him to follow the conversation just fine.

Ana rolled her eyes. "You can't just fuck everyone into doing what you want, Zoya."

"Can't I?" she responded casually before walking up to Nikolai and switching back to English. "Nikolai Lantsov, a pleasure to meet you," she shook his hand and held it just a second longer than strictly necessary. "Zoya Nazyalensky. I'm in charge of this division. Let me show you around."

* * *

Alina remembered the skepticism she'd been greeted with when she arrived in the R&D department, and she was astonished to see how quickly the Ravkan attitude melted away in the face of Nikolai's relentless charm. By the end of the day, even Marie had laughed at a joke he'd made and Zoya couldn't have made her availability any more obvious if she'd tattooed it on her own forehead. Or on Nikolai's.

Nikolai had been impressed with the blueprints that Zoya had shown him and had drawn Davna into an hour long conversation about the specifics of one of the parts of the solar cell. His report back to the secretary that evening must have been positive enough, because the general informed her that funds had come through to complete an initial prototype. She'd need to document expenses, a habit she'd gotten out of when the general had taken control of the military and she had been effectively given a _carte blanche_ , but she was willing to do some administration to get the energy system out into the villages.

The next morning Nikolai was back in the lab early, talking with Nadia about where exactly the remaining challenges were and where he could be the most help. Mal looked up when she walked in; there was pain behind his eyes, but he smiled at her all the same. 

She let herself smile back, cautiously. She thought about saying something, but just then a loud _boom_ sounded uncomfortably close behind her.

She turned to see Eva and Alexei deliberately not looking at each other, trying to keep the sides of their lips from twitching upwards. It had been a long time since they'd blown something up in the lab – they hadn't done it since they'd helped the general create the Shadow – and some part of Alina thought that maybe they'd grown out of it. It looked like she had been wrong on that score.

"Leave my batteries alone!" Harshaw yelled, running to look at the area on the workstation behind the twins that was still smoking. He did a quick inventory, satisfied himself that everything was okay, then glared at the two of them. "It's not funny anymore."

Eva and Alexei looked at each other and burst out laughing. Apparently, they disagreed.

* * *

Alina walked out of the lab, Fedyor by her side. The air was cold and she pulled her hood over her head, situating it carefully around the brimmed newsboy hat she now wore. She'd gotten fed up with kerchiefs and could never get them to cover her hair correctly, so now she just shoved her hair underneath a cap in the morning and didn't worry about it for the rest of the day. Not the most elegant of solutions, but it worked for her.

The last few days at the lab had been some of the best she'd had since the Shadow had made its debut. Working with Nikolai was a delight, and the last couple days he'd brought a different guard instead of Mal, a black-haired woman named Tamar. Even if Mal was trying to make things not awkward, it was easier for Alina to deal with a guard she didn't know than with him. She wasn't the only one in the lab who felt that way, either – it had taken all of two-and-a-half hours before Tamar was leaning on her elbows over Nadia's workstation and flirting with her outrageously. ("Marie's group is working on the part that sits in a river and transfers energy from the current," Nadia explained to the enraptured guard with a small smile. "We call them the _stream team_." "The stream team!" Tamar crowed. "I love it!" Nadia blushed deeply and Alina and Nikolai simultaneously rolled their eyes.)

She was only a couple blocks from the lab when she felt Fedyor tense behind her; she looked up and saw first the large expanse of Ivan's chest, then her husband beside him in the long back coat he always wore. Fedyor nodded " _Soverenyi_ " at his approach and he nodded back, falling into step with her as the guards positioned themselves in front and behind them. He walked next to her silently, not explaining his sudden appearance. 

"Happened to find yourself in the neighborhood?" she asked finally.

"Something like that." He looped his arm around her, a casual display of possession to anyone who couldn't feel the strength of his grip on her shoulder. She was familiar enough with the muscles of his body, but there were times when she forgot that before he became general he had done his own fighting and that he had been very, very good at it.

Now was not one of those times.

"Were you going to tell me."

She gave an experimental tug at her arm and found it firmly held in place. "Tell you what?"

He didn't turn to look at her. "That those boys were planning on staying." 

_Ah_. She'd wondered if he'd known, if maybe he'd been waiting for her to say something. She shrugged with the shoulder pressed into his ribcage. "I figured you'd find out from their visa applications, but why does it matter? Am I not allowed to have friends unless they're on your payroll?"

"You don't have friends anymore." 

She snorted. "Just because you don't?"

The glance he cast down towards her was all ice. "Because your position doesn't allow it. You can have people you trust, a few. You have people you are responsible for. And then there's everyone else."

"Let me guess – all Americans fall into the _everyone else_ category."

"At best."

They walked another block in silence, his grip not lessening, the two of them looking forward as they walked. She wondered if he'd chosen to meet her here rather than at home specifically so that they wouldn't have to look at each other during this conversation, so that she wouldn't see whatever was in his face. She tilted her head upwards and saw his jaw tick before he spoke. "I should have gotten rid of them when they first arrived."

She pressed herself into his side in an effort to lessen the grip on her outer shoulder. It didn't work. A small group passed them on the sidewalk, nodding and giving a couple _Soverenyi_ s each. They nodded back, looking like nothing so much as Ravka's first couple enjoying the evening.

She picked the conversation back up once the group as passed. "Well, it's too late for that now."

"No, it's not." 

He was testing her, trying to see how much she cared and thus much of a threat they posed. She kept her voice light when she replied. "You wouldn't do anything to them."

He sounded almost amused. "Do you really think I wouldn't."

She could feel the muscles of his chest, alert but relaxed, his breathing even. He was irritated, but not unreasonably so; for all that her relationship with people he couldn't control might bother him, he wasn't going to do anything stupid. She let herself smile a little. "You _won't_ , anyway."

There were a few more breaths and they turned the corner, their house coming into view ahead of them. "Don't give me a reason to, and I won't."

They walked through the door and stopped in the entryway. The smell of food drifted towards them from the table that was always set and then cleared by unseen hands. He looked down at her, eyes cold, stripped more raw than she had seen him. He'd let go of her shoulder but she could see the tension in his fingers as they hung by his side, wanting to reach for her but more wanting her to reach for him first. 

Whatever was between them now, he wanted her to reassure him that it was real. She watched him for a minute, letting him wait, before tilting her head upwards just enough to make the offer clear. There was a moment where she saw his features relax in relief, but just a moment – his lips met hers, hard, a kiss that was more teeth than tongue, more taking than giving. 

He wanted reassurance, and she gave it to him. It wasn't genuine, but in spite of everything he'd done and everything she would do to him, it wasn't fake, either. He was a monster but he was _her_ monster; if she feared the part of her that found a partner in him, she was past being able to pretend that it didn't exist. When his hands wrapped around her waist, she felt her own anger reflected in the tension of his fingers, his own wanting in the way they dug into her side through her coat.

She tugged the lapels of his jacket down towards her, and he followed. The dinner cooled, became cold, and was, eventually, forgotten.

* * *

Winter had come on suddenly. The days and nights of work were long, but in many ways Alina felt like she'd just blinked and found herself in the freezing cold, trudging through the underground tunnels once again. She was dutifully accompanied by Fedyor wherever she went; though she could have used the car at her disposal, the walk between the lab and her home was her only time alone to think.

Ravka was being rebuilt around her. She heard whispers at the lab and reports in the evening of infrastructure improvements, of military divisions being diverted to building instead of destroying now that there was relative calm on each of the borders. But she saw in person only the sliver of the country that she could control: the path from her warroom to the lab.

The days had fallen into a routine – Nikolai had his own workstation and was already deeply involved in the energy unit they were developing. She lost herself for hours talking over details with him as if they were back at university. She'd even grown accustomed to Mal's presence a short distance away; he watched her, jaw set with a determination she didn't understand and silent in a way that she was grateful for.

It surprised her, initially, that she ate with her husband nearly every evening. They were both busy – ridiculously so – but he'd clearly decided that this was a half-hour of the day when he would not take meetings or calls. He met her outside their home and walked her in, where they ate in silence as often as not. After dinner, she would head to her warroom and read until her vision began to blur. The general had gotten in the habit of sitting in one of the chairs, alternately reading his own papers, dealing with email, or making a phone call while he watched her work. 

"You don't need to supervise me all the time," she mumbled into a book one evening. "I'm not going to die of loneliness if you're not here." 

"I didn't think you would," was all he offered in reply. He would wait, half-watching her, until her eyelids started to close. He'd stand and grab her hand with a soft, "Bed, Alina," before leading her up the stairs.

It wasn't uncommon for one of the general's staff to interrupt him in the evenings, and Alina took to leaving the door of her warroom open for that purpose. It was, however, unusual to hear Ivan's muffled protests followed by a solid _thwack_ and a cane thumping quickly down the hall. The general was nearly to the door by the time Baghra came in.

"You need a new guard," she announced, jerking her head back to indicate the limping and furious Ivan who entered right on her heels. "I recommend one with metal knees." 

The general glanced up at Ivan, indicated his dismissal with a shake of his head. Ivan's gaze narrowed, furious, but he just cast a resentful glare at the older woman before departing. 

She leaned heavily on her cane and the general pulled out a chair for her. " _Madraya_ ," he observed. "What brings you here?" 

She didn't acknowledge the remark or the chair. "A ring of mine has gone missing."

From where she sat, Alina blinked. Her husband had mentioned his mother hadn't given him the ring that now sat buried in their closet, but Alina hadn't really thought he hadn't _asked_ for it. The general rested his hands on the back of the chair and continued examining his mother with the same impassive stare.

"I would have thought," Baghra continued, "that the leader of Ravka wouldn't have to resort to stealing an old woman's ring. That he could get any ring he wanted."

"He could and he did." The general pushed the ignored chair back towards the table, his expression unshifting. "You weren't expecting to get the ring back, though." 

"No." She tilted her head to one side, and for her all that the years wore on her she like nothing so much as a bird, circling, deciding when to swoop down on its prey. "I'm moving." 

Even from where Alina sat at the table, she could see the shift in his stance. He'd been caught off guard. "Moving?"

"To the North. Something quieter." 

"Moving," the general repeated. "To the north."

"To Petrazoi."

"Petrazoi," he ground out. 

Baghra exhaled loudly. "Repeating everything I say doesn't count as conversation, boy."

There were two breaths before he spoke. "You can't move there."

She gave a bark of laughter. "Oh, I may be the only person in Ravka who doesn't take orders from you."

"Are your accommodations in Os Alta insufficient," he asked through gritted teeth.

She waved dismissively. "They're fine." She leaned back on her heels, a position that looked particularly precarious and which Alina guessed she adapted just to make her son nervous. Then she looked at Alina for the first time in the conversation, lifted her lips in imitation of a smile. "But what do I have to stay here for? Now that my only son's happily married."

Alina leaned forward at that, propping her elbows over her papers, opening her eyes in feigned surprise. "You're not going to stick around for the grandchildren?" 

The general turned, slowly,  jaw clenched tight, eyebrow deliberately positioned. Alina narrowed her eyes at him. "What? She's not the only one funny one in this family."

Baghra's lips had lifted even further, and Alina could swear the older woman was forcing down a laugh. "She might do after all," Baghra mused to her son. "You've always been too serious." 

He turned back to her, and there was nearly a full minute of silence this time, mother and son looking at each other with nearly identically unreadable expressions. The general spoke first, but his voice was low. "I can't keep you safe if you move."

"If you can't protect me outside of Os Alta, you're not a very good leader."  

The look she gave him was softer, now; after a minute, the older woman sighed. "Be good, Aleksander. Remember what I taught you."

He spun his wedding ring around his finger, a gesture that until now Alina hadn't seen him make, and his response was quiet enough that she almost didn't hear. "You never taught me that."

Baghra gave a sad smile before turning and walking towards the door. When she reached it, she glanced back over her shoulder. "Be better, then."

* * *

A few nights later, Alina found herself alone in the house in the evening. The general had been called away during dinner – though she didn't know the details, there were only a handful of problems that he deemed important enough to interrupt their meal and she didn't envy him dealing with any of them. She finished eating and made her way to her warroom, trailing her fingertips along the wall and humming softly. 

She reached the door of her warroom, but instead of taking out her keyring she continued down the hallway, stopping in front of the general's study and turning the doorknob. It was locked.

She nodded to herself and continued humming the tune as she headed back down the hall and unlocked the door to her own room.

* * *

"This had better be good," Zoya pouted, dropping herself into a standard-issue lab chair but somehow still mustering more grace than Alina could have managed on her best day, let alone at five a.m. The lieutenant yawned, faux-carelessly stretching her arms a way that accentuated all the best parts of her. "I _don't_ like missing my beauty sleep _._ " 

Harshaw was already at the table and Davna and Ana were making their way across the lab. Alina didn't like getting up this early either, but she didn't have many options these days – with Nikolai around so much of the time and her evenings occupied with studying, she had almost no time alone with the rest of her division. She didn't want to commit too much to email in case the general decided they were worth reading again, so she had sent a text the night before asking for an early meeting.

And everyone had shown. She thought this was a good sign.

Zoya looked up and saw Davna and Ana, too. "What are they doing here?"

"I need the four of you to help me with something." 

"With what?" Harshaw asked as the two women took seats at the table.

"I have an idea." 

"Those always turn out great," mumbled Zoya.

Alina ignored the comment, producing a folder and passing around the papers, trying to keep herself calm. On the papers was a part of her plan, part of the revenge she wanted, a secret. She'd spent weeks trying to mentally structure the idea in such a way where it could be written down, attempting to turn it into something that was ready to share with other people. Her writing had been furtive, rushed, but she hoped it was enough for them to go on. "I've been turning this around in my head for a while now. It's speculative but I think it could work."

Zoya skimmed the sheet Alina had given her, raised an eyebrow. "Speculative is a generous word."

Harshaw looked up after another few seconds. "Why us?"

"You're the best. I can't work on it – I'm going to have to spend too much time with Nikolai. But you all can work on it discreetly."

Davna frowned. "Discreetly? That sounds unsanctioned." 

" _I'm_ sanctioning it," Alina said. "And we just need to be discreet until we figure out if it can actually work. With the four of you working together –"

"Together? As in, with her?" Zoya pointed to Ana. "Uh-uh, no way. She's out of her mind."

"Too scared of me, _Leytenant_?" Ana teased, wiggling her switchblade at her commander.

Zoya blew a curl off her face. "Too _sane_ is more like it."

Ana shrugged, an antagonistic nonchalance. "That's fine. I don't want to work with someone who takes baths with a rubber –"

Zoya jumped up and slammed her hands on the table, leaning towards Ana, who stood in response. "At least I'm not a fucking spy!"

" _Down_ , you two," Alina sighed, shoving herself between the two women as they  bared their teeth at each other in a remarkably animal display of aggression. "For better or worse, I'm going to need you to work together. _Leytenant_ Nazylanesky, you're the commanding officer – could you pull it together?"

"It's _together,_ " Zoya spat before tossing her hair behind her shoulder and lifting her chin. "And I _am_ the commanding officer. I don't work for you." 

"I'm not ordering you to do it," Alina responded.

"Then why are we here being pitched on some secret-at-least-for-now long shot project?"

This was the part Alina was most nervous about. She'd read their files carefully, tried to emphasize the parts of her idea that she thought would appeal to each of them, but it was still a risk and she wouldn't be certain until she asked the question. "Because I think that each of you wants to work on it." She propped her arms on her hips, braver than she felt. "Am I wrong?" 

No one responded for a moment, and Alina held her breath. Then Ana shook her head and Harshaw stared back at her, lips pressed together, and gave a slight nod. Zoya frowned, but after some silent negotiation in a look exchanged with Harshaw, she sighed. "We're in."

The relief Alina felt nearly made her laugh when the response from Davna was: "I think I can do this better than what you have here."

A smile tugged at her lips. "Then let's get to work."

* * *

Alina and the general ate dinner alone after the secretary had come and departed once more. Alina didn't enjoy the secretary's visits – too many hours in a windowless room, too many hours where she wasn't _doing_ anything – but she had her end of the bargain to keep. It was winter enough that the sun was only just rising when the delegations entered the government building and the moon and stars were out long before they left.

She stared now into the dark of the window. The tip of her thumb touched the scar on her palm and she pulled it back quickly – the skin was red and sore from hours of rubbing it each night while she worked. 

"They'll be back, you know. The Americans." 

She glanced at her husband. "I know."

"They'll be here for the new year."

Alina did the math quickly, groaned when she realized it was much sooner than she would have wanted. Just a few weeks. "Don't they have anything better to do? They clearly hate coming here – the chief of staff perpetually looks like she just stepped in dog shit every time she sees us."

His lip twitched. "Ask her about it next time, if you want. We've been invited to their new year's eve party."

A party with the American delegation seemed like the least exciting way to ring in the new year. "Please tell me it's at the embassy and we won't have to go."

"It's at the ambassador's mansion, which is, for better or worse, not considered American soil." He glanced up and took in her expression. "The price of politics."

Alina frowned before picking up her fork and pushing the food on her plate. There were a few minutes of silence before she cleared her throat again. "I'm ready." The general looked up from the beet he was slicing and raised his eyebrows slightly. "I've finished the assignment you gave me. I've filled out the maps – Ravka, Fjerda, _and_ Shu Han. I'm ready."

"Are you." 

She raised her eyebrows at him. "You are aware you're allowed to inflect your voice at the end of a question."

"And you're aware this is a meal and not a war." 

"It's always a war," she mimicked, standing and heading to the room where she'd left the maps the night before. "I'm ready to start the next one when you are."

An hour later, they'd covered the maps of all three countries, Alina explaining her markings and the general listening silently, asking the occasional question.

He had tapped a finger on one section of the map. "Why did you put the watchpost there? The visibility is better from over here."

She shook her head. "I'm sure we thought that, at one point – we probably _did_ have a watchpost there, but it's got to be abandoned by now. You have a straight view down into Fjerda with the mountain providing some nice cover except that you never have any visibility." She walked over to a bookshelf and ran her fingers along the spines until she found the one she was looking for, flipped open to a dog-eared page, handed it to him. "There's a dense layer of fog that covers the area nearly year round. There are probably a few hours of visibility there each day, but not enough to be worth keeping anyone around."

He'd only nodded in response. She'd gone over everything, answered the questions he had. Now she watched him as he bent over the maps, running his own fingers lightly along the lines. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, much less what he was seeing – she herself often saw something other than the markings, but he'd been here much longer, seen more of the country, seen more wars.

She chewed the inside of her cheek, waiting, following the path of his fingertips took over her work. The promise of revenge was thick enough in the air that she thought she could taste it and a slight tremor swept through her body, the desperation of _wanting_. He pressed his palms to either side of the map and looked down at it for a minute, unmoving.

She broke the silence. "Did I pass?" 

He exhaled, not quite amused. "You passed."

She shook her shoulders and let the feeling run down her spine. Her lips parted, a smile much more ferocious than she would have been capable of a few months before. "Now what?"

He raised his head and met her gaze. He looked at her and something inside twisted in a way that was cloyingly sweet, the aching discomfort of a sour taste on her tongue. The thing inside of her clawed and bit; she wanted revenge and she wanted more revenge and she _wanted –_

"Now what?" he repeated, then spread his fingers. "You're commanding this war – you tell me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW that was a long one. A few housekeeping things:
> 
> \- happy belated birthday to my little fic!! It's over a year old now, and my how it's grown. Thank you SO MUCH to all of you who have left kudos or comments or found me on tumblr – every question and bit of encouragement has helped get the little fic through to here and I really, really, really appreciate it.  
> \- it looks like we're passing 100k words in the next chapter, which I feel like deserves a celebration and/or official recognition of the fact that I have clearly lost my mind.  
> \- I still think I can finish this up in maybe 23 chapters + epilogue, hopefully with chapters not as long as this one. So! We're nearing the end!  
> \- I SUPER appreciate everyone who has been supportive of this fic so far. You all are the best. For real.
> 
> <3


	18. Chapter 18

"You seem distracted today." Nikolai eyed Alina from where she had pressed the power button on her phone for the twenty-seventh time that hour. "Everything okay?"

She wanted to laugh. 

You could call it distracted, and maybe it was – or maybe the work she was doing with Nikolai was the thing that was distracting her from everything else. She got into the lab hours in the very early hours each morning to go over what Zoya, Ana, Harshaw, and Davna had been working on the day before, quickly scribbling down any notes she had for them before heading to her own workstation and resuming work on the integrated Solnyshko with her former lab partner and under the watchful eye of a suspiciously silent ex-boyfriend. Then there was the planning she was doing in the evenings – she'd spent every night the last couple weeks with the general plotting out the first moves against Fjerda. The Fjerdans had backed off from their attacks on the border thanks to some convincing from the Americans which meant that any moves Ravka made had to be done under the radar. With her husband's help she'd come up with a plan, a series of accidents to weaken the Fjerdan military without causing enough damage to raise suspicion – and which would, hopefully, get them closer to the answers she needed about the massacre that left her an orphan. 

And yes, she  _was_ distracted. Today was the day the first of those plans were to be enacted, and she was sitting at Nikolai's workstation, attempting to focus on Solnyshko.  


She'd almost told the lab she wasn't feeling well that day, had almost informed the general she'd be spending the morning in his office getting updates from the military in real time, but she hadn't needed him to tell her that that would have been a mistake. The point of the maneuvers was secrecy; it shouldn't be obvious to anyone other than those directly involved that they were happening at all, let alone that Alina had anything to do with them.

But she had seethed all the same as she got dressed that morning, and her husband had noticed. He pushed her still-uncovered hair back from her face and kissed her forehead, promising: "I'll text you when it's over."

And he still hadn't texted.  _He should have texted by now._   She chewed the inside of her cheek and took a deep breath, trying to appear calm in front of Nikolai, who was still waiting for an answer to his question.   


_Is everything okay_? She smiled. "Everything's fine. Nervous about Friday."   


Nikolai hesitated but then nodded, willing to accept the answer. "Friday will be fine. Tamar said that Nadia says the initial setup is going smoothly." 

Alina fidgeted and fought the urge to check her phone again. "If the installation has problems do you think that will impact the Amer – er, do you think it could still get funded?" 

He examined her carefully. They'd been working together for a couple months now, and things had fallen almost back into their old routine. Nikolai provided humor and enthusiasm and questions that helped focus Alina's thinking – the fact that Nadia and Marie and a crew of other excellent people were around seemed to amplify his own excitement, and despite her late nights and very early mornings, she fed off of that energy. He'd joke with her as he always had, and she responded in kind as she always had, but though on the surface the routine was the same, it was also unmistakably different. They could collaborate on Solnyshko, could use their work as a shared secret, but they were both painfully aware of the other secrets, too, the ones that were carefully unshared.

Alina had plenty secrets of her own, and even Mal, arms folded and eyes never leaving the two of them, must have had at least one. Nikolai, she was sure, had several. She wanted to ask them about the shadows behind their eyes; maybe there would be a time when she could do that without having to explain her own. 

Even if there might be a time later, there certainly wasn't  _now_.   


"My mother's expectations are low enough for the project that she's going to be blown away." Alina put her head in her hands and groaned – Nikolai had  _definitely_ been spending too much time with Nadia if he was starting to pick up on the wind group's sense of humor. He smiled and pushed her shoulder gently. "You've chosen a good first site for installation – strong winds, a good river. It's going really well, and I don't say that lightly."  


She dropped her hands from her face. "Not to anyone you're not trying to get something out of, anyway."

"Ah," he sighed leaning back in his chair. "It is good to work with someone who really  _knows_ me."   


Her phone vibrated and she nearly jumped, snatching it from the table and unlocking it. 

The text was in the general's typical laconic style, stating simply:  _Done_.  


She pressed her lips closed around the beginnings of a smile, reading the word a third and fourth time before letting herself exhale carefully.

"What is it?" Nikolai asked, peering over her shoulder. She clicked the phone locked. 

"Private." 

Nikolai raised his eyebrows. "How private?" She made an equivocating gesture and his face lit up. "Please tell me that Ravka's  _Soveren_ just sent you a dirty photo."  


Alina laughed, the idea surprising but not, she realized, wholly unpleasant. "Something like that."

* * *

The downside of a clean energy system that involves wind power, Alina quickly learned, was that you had to set up the system in a place where there was a lot of wind. Even though the hat she now wore kept hair from blowing in her face, she found windy weather unpleasant at the best of times; in the Ravkan winter it was almost unbearable.

_Karma_ , she guessed, gritting her teeth and ducking her head so the hood absorbed the brunt of the cold.  _This is probably the least I deserve_.  


Nadia and the group she was managing had done most of the setup themselves, but Nikolai had been excited about helping with the installation so he, Alina, and their guards had shown up in the village the morning before the demonstration. Fedyor trailed Alina, who grudgingly followed Nikolai – who was nearly knocked off his feet by the wind more than once as he bounded across the rocks towards where Marie was setting up her part of the system in the river.

Alina, Nadia, and Zoya had spent hours the week before debating the best village to test the initial version of the energy system, a discussion that had almost devolved into a shouting match before Alina blurted out, "Chaykormansk."

It was a risk. Alina knew she was pushing it by mentioning anything that she had found in Zoya's personnel files, and once she'd said it the lieutenant had turned to her, slowly. After a few moments where Alina thought it was possible Nazyalensky would make a lunge for her throat, the corners of Zoya's bright red lips lifted and she replied, "That's a great idea."

Over the course of the week, the group had slowly disappeared from the lab to converge on Zoya's hometown and set up the first real test of the system. The general, the secretary, and their respective staffs had arrived yesterday evening and now, as the winter sun began to make its way over the mountains, the whole group stood around a the series of batteries set up next to a power plant that hadn't produced energy in years. 

Harshaw opened up his laptop and, after a few clicks of the keyboard, turned it around to show the group. "Here," he explained, "you can see the level of the batteries, how many kilowatt hours of energy are being stored – that's the y-axis. The x-axis is time, and the red line here is what we project that we need at every point during the day in order to provide uninterrupted power supply for Chaykormansk. Any questions so far?"

"Can you just turn it on already?" Grace grumbled, stomping her feet in the morning cold.

Harshaw gave a half grin. "We turned it on last night so that it would have a chance to collect energy when the wind is at its worst –" He cast a glance to Zoya. "– strongest. The batteries have just been charging, though; nothing's actually being used yet." 

"So when do we get to see how it's doing?" 

"When we flip this switch. It'll feed data into the laptop when it starts sending electricity through the grid so we can see how much energy we're able to store when it's also being used." 

The secretary interrupted. "We're supposed to watch this graph for a line to show us that?"

"You can," Nadia offered, wrapping a gloved hand around the lever and pulling. "But the real show," she nodded to behind where they stood, "is over there."

They all turned around to the village behind them, still quiet in the early morning. Then there was a hum, a buzz, and streetlights flicked on, one after another. A moment later, windows lit up, faces appearing, staring out towards the plant where they had gathered. 

Alina turned back towards the computer where a blue line had now appeared on the screen – a full twenty percent above the red line. They had overshot the amount of energy they predicted the village would need, even accounting for the fact that none of it had been used overnight. A small curl of excitement began in her stomach. It was working, really  _working –_   


A hand rested on her shoulder and she turned to see her husband standing behind her. She grinned at him – unguarded as she nearly never was these days – and his own lips twitched up slightly. "Well done." 

There was a look in his eyes that she had seen only a few times before, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the man he could have been. She remembered when Genya had told her that Ravka was the only thing the general was really passionate about, and she realized that if he'd been born in a peaceful Ravka, if his childhood hadn't been consumed by war, things might have been different. He might have been different. 

And she laughed. Because even though he loved Ravka, it didn't change who he was or what he had done. Because there was something that _she_ had been able to do to help their country, and maybe other countries as well. She met Zoya's eyes, which narrowed and then rolled at Alina's laughter, but not before Alina had seen the dampness in them.  


Grace stomped her feet again. "It works. Are we planning on standing around all day and just watching the blue line?"

"Yes," Alina replied, clearing her throat to stop her laugh but unable to keep the grin off her face. "That's exactly what I'm planning on doing."

* * *

The first few weeks of the covert war she was commanding had focused on weakening the Fjerdan outposts while inconspicuously moving Ravkan troops into position. They were making movements in a direction toward the Fjerdan record centers and their communication hubs in hopes that they would learn more about the history of the Fjerdan military, about who had been responsible nearly two-and-a-half decades ago. It was time consuming, painstaking work; as much as Alina wanted to go after the Fjerdans right away she knew she needed a strategy. She needed more information.

The next step in her plan had eluded her for some time when it hit her in the shower one morning. She pored over the maps that evening, opened up books across the table to make sure the evidence supported the move, her legs shaking slightly in relief and terror when she found that they did. She let herself consider it for a couple days before she convinced herself that it was necessary; once she had, she shared it with the general when they were next in her warroom. 

He stared down at the map she had created, at the markings showing the proposed movements of a small group of Ravkan soldiers. He was silent for a few moments before speaking. "This is a suicide mission."

Her heart beat hard but she kept her shoulders back, jaw clenched. She had learned more from him than just military strategy. "Yes, but tactically worth it. It will hurt Fjerda but will seem like an accident. Neither they nor the Americans will be able to retaliate." 

He studied the map, the deliberate gentleness of his movements making her uneasy. When he spoke, the question caught her off guard. "Who commands the division?"

She had prepared herself to defend the necessity, the casualties, even the location and timing of the mission. But she hadn't anticipated that question. "Why does that matter?"

He kept his head bent over the map, traced his fingertips lightly over her indications. "It's  _Meydzhor_ Balka. Her brother is currently stationed in the south. How many people are in the division?"  


She blinked. "Half a dozen."

"Seven. Do you know their names?"

"Why are you asking?"

He finally looked up, expression unreadable. "Do you know or don't you."

"Of course I don't know."

His own jaw twitched and he was silent for a moment, regarding her. When he spoke, it was quiet, low. "If you don't know the names of the Ravkans you're ordering to die, the order isn't yours to give." She flinched and he straightened, touching her shoulder gently as though it would lessen the sting. "Find another way, Alina."

She stared down at the paper once he left, guilt and shame and anger and hunger burning in her stomach, threatening to rise. After a minute she crumpled the map in her hands and threw it at the wall.

_Find another way_. She sat back heavily in a cushioned chair, thinking about the ring in her closet, the dark heat that shone with promise when she cracked open the box to examine it. She had put it on earlier that evening, the weight on her fingers solid, reassuring.  


_Find another way_. She swore quietly and exhaled before resting her head on the table's cold, heavy wood.  


* * *

Baghra stared out the window of her new apartment in Petrazoi. At night, the Fjerdan peaks were only visible by the absence of stars on the horizon; the mountains across the border rose and blotted out stars far above her, stretched out to either side for an eternity, the snow on their slopes dark and quiet and cold.

Very, very cold.

She used the tip of her cane to poke at a log in the fireplace to her side. The view might have been stunning to some; certainly the realtor had described it as such, at least until Baghra's silent glare had led the woman to make an exit somewhat sooner than she might have otherwise. Baghra had smiled to herself, no longer certain if that was a technique she'd learned from her son or the other way around. 

A word like  _stunning_ couldn't begin to capture the complexities of view for Baghra. She didn't find herself amazed in any traditional sense – she wasn't overwhelmed by the beauty, certainly, or even silenced by the sheer magnitude of the peaks before her. There was a discomfort she felt, one that had been kept at bay by the fire next to her for decades now. She was learning that, this close to the border, the fire just didn't make the same dent it used to.  


She raised her eyes to the mountaintops. She didn't need the sunlight to highlight the shape of those slopes, to know how harsh and forbidding they were, how hard it might be for an injured woman and her child to make it down them alone in the winter. How unlikely they would be to survive. 

How  _angry_ they would be if they did.   


She'd learned long before that that anger was a tool, that it could be hardened and sharpened and that patience could wield it with a deadly force; there was little that couldn't be accomplished given enough anger and enough time. She'd taught her son that, taught him to watch and to wait. That the flames of anger could keep you warm, could feed you far better than the finest meal.

He had learned too well.

She poked the fire again, aware that she would have to add another log or risk it going out completely. A spark flew, landing on the tip of her cane, extinguishing itself in the lacquer surrounding the black wood. 

She frowned to herself. She'd have to make a decision soon.

* * *

Alina tapped her foot as Genya concealed the scar on her palm. "Are you sure you don't want to come to the American ambassador's party tonight?"

"Parties  _are_ a specialty of mine," Genya conceded, her hair falling in a curtain around Alina's open hand.  


"But?"

"But I have other plans."

"Where are you going?" Genya waved a hand vaguely and Alina frowned. "Anything I should be worried about?"

Genya looked up, arching a brow. "I do have a life outside of my work here, and it doesn't all involve assassinations."

"Sorry," Alina mumbled, too embarrassed to ask any more questions. After a minute of silence she admitted, "I guess I just wanted you there."

Genya's squeezed the hand that held Alina's wrist. "You'll be fine without me, and the party will be fine. Who knows, it might even be good for you."

"Good for me?"

"I know that doing things that are good for you – like sleeping – is a crazy concept in this household. But you can't work all the time. It's okay to have fun occasionally." Genya finished and straightened her back, rolling her shoulders. "Do  _not_ give me that look. And behave tonight." She stood and leaned down, kissing Alina on the forehead. "I'll see you in the new year."  


That evening, Alina fought with the scarf she was attempting to wrap around her hair and frowned at herself in the mirror. "I'm surprised," she commented to her husband, "that you couldn't figure out a way to get us out of this party." 

"Who says I wanted to."

She snorted, trying to remember exactly how the women in the videos she'd watched online had wrapped their hair. They made it look so  _easy_ that she had been confident that she'd be able to pull something together. She had maybe overestimated her abilities in this regard. "For starters, you hate fun."  


"I don't hate fun," he replied mildly, leaning on the wall next to the mirror and watching her struggle. 

She raised an eyebrow. "Then your idea of fun seems to diverge from other people's."

He crossed his arms and tilted his head back against the wall. "Undoubtedly. But I'm not the one who has spent the last week complaining about an upcoming party. To an outside observer, it might seem like  _you_ were the one uninterested in attending."   


She frowned, unwilling to concede the point. With her husband there, the party would be all politics. Even if she could hold her own in a political conversation, it didn't mean she  _wanted_ to; she'd much rather be figuring out how to locate the people responsible for her family's massacre. There was a pressure on her chest, and she didn't think that a celebration would do anything about it.   


The last piece of hair finally disappeared beneath the fabric and she put her hands on her hips, examining her handiwork in the mirror. It was a far cry from what Genya would have been able to accomplish, but it was ... passable. Perhaps. She looked questioningly at her husband. "Well? How do I look?"

His lips quirked to one side. "Fishing for compliments?"

She snorted in response before turning back to the mirror and twisting her neck to examine the sides. "Hardly. You didn't even tell me I looked beautiful on our wedding day – I think I know better than to hold my breath waiting for anything from you." 

He eyed her stance, the expression on her face. "You look like you're preparing for battle."

"Anything  _helpful_ to contribute?"  


He hesitated for a moment before pushing off the wall and walking behind her. His fingers tugged the fabric on the back of her head, smoothing it, adjusting the tension. "Better."

She nodded at herself in the mirror. It did look better. "Alright then. Ready for battle?"

He gave her half a smile. "Always."

* * *

The ambassador's mansion was on the other side of Os Alta, a sprawling residence that must have been twice the size of the one that Alina and the general inhabited. It didn't have any of the gaudy showiness of the president's palace, but it also contrasted starkly with the general's modern dark wood. The ambassador's residence was warmer somehow, more inviting than either of those. Photographs from all over the United States lined the walls. 

Alina made her way to the edge of the room to examine the photos after having fulfilled the hand-shaking obligations that came with being one of the  _Soveren_ Morozova and given hugs to the people in her lab who had shown up. She was now looking at a photograph of fir trees in the rain before turning to read the small explanation beside it.  


"That's where you're from, if I recall correctly." 

The ambassador had appeared beside her, and she turned to him, showing enough teeth in her smile to indicate that she understood exactly what he meant. "That's where I grew up, yes." 

He nodded, eyes dancing across her face. They hadn't met before tonight – she'd had no desire to meet him and could only imagine the feeling was at least mutual – but there was something about him that seemed almost ... familiar. 

"Do you miss it?" he asked.

"Miss what?" she bit out too quickly, and his eyes crinkled as if that had answered the question. "It feels good," she amended, "to be home."

The ambassador gave a low laugh at that. "I would imagine that it does."

"Ambassador." The general was by Alina's side, hand splayed across her upper back, and the ambassador smiled a greeting.

"I was pleased to hear the two of you could make it this evening. You're not known for attending functions."

The general's expression didn’t flicker and he didn't look at Alina as he replied, "We wouldn't miss it." 

The secretary and her chief of staff joined the conversation a moment later and Alina bit the inside of her cheek in an effort to avoid returning Grace's grimace. She was jealous of the ambassador's ability to excuse himself as the conversation turned into a debate on the newer policies of an administration several countries east of them; she made attempts to feign interest in the discussion, but her mind was half on revenge and wholly absent from whatever was happening around her.

"So," the secretary said just as Alina's eyes had started glazing over, fixing her gaze on first the general then Alina. "The Shadow." 

"This is a party, Secretary, not a deposition," he replied, waving over a waiter with a tray of drinks. He took two, handing one to Alina, who took it gratefully and downed it immediately, and the other to the secretary.

"I want to know," she continued, accepting the drink but ignoring the comment, "what would have happened if you  _hadn't_ been able to control the reactions when you tried the Shadow for the first time. What if they hadn't stopped, if it had kept expanding?"  


"I don't typically find that counterfactuals make for productive discussion," the general replied, not quite dismissive. "But, if that had happened, I suppose that none of us would be here discussing it, would we."

The secretary's face was grim, although everyone there knew that America had made the same calculations when testing nuclear weapons for the first time. She studied the general carefully before taking a sip of the drink and turning to Alina. "Though it may bore your husband, another counterfactual I sometimes contemplate is how things would have turned out if  _you_ had been different."  


Alina bristled, and at the moment she opened her mouth to reply she felt his fingers on shoulder. "We could all have been different," the general answered, the evenness of his voice not betraying the pressure of his hand on her arm, "and the world would be worse for it."

The secretary turned to him, half-smile covering the bemused expression on her face. "Do you really believe that?"

He returned the expression. "Don't you?"

Just then Nikolai came by, alone. He had brought Tamar tonight, Alina had noticed, though apparently she wasn't on duty – that is, unless being on duty involved a lot of keeping both her hands in direct physical contact with Nadia. "Pardon the interruption – Secretary,  _Soveren_ Morozova,  _Soveren_ Morozova – but there's an incredibly urgent matter that I need Alina for. A matter of, um, international development."   


"International development." Alina could feel the fingers tighten on her shoulder, even when Nikolai turned on his smile.  _Especially_ then.  


"Morozova," the secretary said, almost amused, "come drink with me." 

There was a tense moment before Alina felt her husband's arm drop from her shoulder. She looked up at him, eyebrow quirked. "All right," he replied to the secretary, his jaw clenching briefly before turning to Alina. 

She didn't quite understand the reason for look he gave her, but it's meaning was clear enough that once the secretary and general had headed towards the bar Grace snorted, pulling her phone out of her pocket. "Like he thinks we're going to eat you or something."

_Lovely_. Alina turned to Nikolai. "What exactly is so important?"  


His smile widened. "First off, you looked miserable in that discussion, so you're welcome for saving you."

"I don't need saving."

He paused, ran a hand through his hair, and then exhaled. "I need you to teach me to dance." 

"You – " Alina blinked, and then looked to the side of the room where many of the Ravkans and a few of the ambassador's staff had started the line dances. 

Nikolai looked at Alina, eyes wide and soulful. "You  _know_ I hate being left out when everyone else is having fun. Besides, I think you could use a dance or two."  


"What does  _that_ mean?"  


"You've been working a lot and you could use some fun, is all." Alina didn't like at all being lectured about her work habits twice in one day, but he shrugged and continued on, the deliberate nonchalance of his speech betraying that he’d been thinking about it for a while. "You're allowed to enjoy yourself sometimes, what you already have. You're allowed to be happy with it."

It had been months since she'd thought of being happy with what she did have rather than focusing on the future. She used to do that, used to relish the process of development, the individual discoveries day by day. And now, whatever time she wasn't planning for the future was occupied with thinking about getting revenge for the past.

Maybe he was right – it couldn't hurt to enjoy what she had. For tonight, anyway. 

"I'll teach you to dance," she agreed.

His face lit up. "Excellent! Grace, any interest in joining us?"

Grace looked up from her phone to stare, wide-eyed at Nikolai. "Are you fucking kidding me?" When neither of them answered, she snapped, "No. No, I'm not interested in dancing." She wandered off, shaking her head. "Jesus."

"A delight, isn't she?" Nikolai sighed after her.

Alina clapped her hands together and thought back to her lessons with Genya. "The most important thing about dancing – we're going to need some vodka." 

Nikolai had, to no one's surprise, been a fast learner and a great dancer, and a couple hours later, he and Alina were sweating, completely caught up in the line dances. The secretary and the general were still at the bar, the secretary in the midst of an animated discussion and the general's gaze directly on Alina whenever she found herself facing his direction. She was more alive than she'd been in months and felt like she'd been dancing forever; she was beginning to wonder if they'd missed the new year completely when the ambassador and his wife turned on a Ravkan radio station that was beginning a countdown to midnight. That dancing stopped and people began moving purposefully across the room; Zoya made her way over to Nikolai, casually draping her arms around his neck and smiling widely. Glasses of champagne were passed around, and Alina, nearly breathless, turned to find her husband standing towards the edge of the dance floor and watching her, an amusement playing at his features.

"Eight! Seven!"

She walked towards him. "Something funny?" she asked, catching her breath and taking the champagne flute he offered. There were plenty of empty glasses around the room already and the party seemed to be devolving quickly – as she looked around her eye caught on Tamar's dark hair in a corner, a pair of hands that could only be Nadia's tangled deeply in it. 

"Six! Five!"

"Just watching," he replied, his lips tugging to one side as he set down an empty champagne flute on the table beside him.

"Four! Three!"

She drained her own glass in one gulp then smiled at him widely. "Lucky you."

He reached for her waist, ducking his head down to her level, pressing his lips to hers as the crowed yelled  _midnight!_ He kissed her softly, briefly, his lips sweet from the champagne.  


He straightened again and she took in the room around them. There had been some discussion of keeping the party going until midnight on the American east coast, but at this point it seemed unlikely that the party was going to last much longer than the next half hour; the people who had been dancing minutes before had suddenly realized they were tired, Grace and the secretary seemed to have left, and everyone else was beginning to pair off – an enthusiastic Zoya was wrapped up in Nikolai's arms, and much of the embassy staff appeared to be getting into the new year's spirit. 

_You're allowed to enjoy it_. It was a party and she'd had enough vodka and her heart was racing from the dancing and –  


_Fuck it_. She lifted herself onto the balls of her feet and kissed the general.  


There was a moment of surprise when he didn't return the kiss, but just a moment – then he wrapped his arms firmly around her waist and lifted her off the floor, her feet dangling, and she laughed into his mouth. She felt, for the time being, like there wasn't anything else. There wasn't their past, there certainly wasn't their future. There was here, tonight. Her tongue met his and the part of her stomach that was pressed against him burned.

"You did," he mumbled against her lips.

She pulled her head back to look at him, brow creased, but he didn't let her down. "Did what?"

His pupils were wide from the dark and champagne, nearly covering the quartz of his eyes. "Look beautiful," he said. "At our wedding." 

The planes of his face were open, wanting. She traced her fingers down his jaw before returning the lopsided smile. 

"Oh, Aleksander," she whispered, leaning in so that their lips touched again. "I know."

* * *

"I have an idea!" a breathless Alina exclaimed twenty minutes later as they returned to their house, the first snow of the new year gently coating their shoulders of their jackets. 

The general laughed, almost relaxed. "Do you?"

She ran into the kitchen and headed for the fruit bowl on the center island, pulling out three apples, a pear, and a dark winter plum, arranging them on the countertop. "Hear me out. This," she picked up one of the apples, "is Skudene, the Fjerdan border town closest to Ravka on the west near the ocean. We know that they have records there, right? There's a large military presence nearby. So what do you think –" 

"I think," the general teased, leaning onto the counter, "that you've had too much vodka to be thinking military strategy."

She pretended to be affronted. "Maybe  _you've_ had too much to be judging it. See, if the pear is Os Alta, and this other apple is our  _own_ records station –"   


The general shook his head. "That's not where our records station is. If you're trying to make it realistic."

Alina stared at the fruit, blinking. "What about this isn't realistic?" 

"The scale, for starters." Suddenly she felt herself lifted, and a second later she was seated on the far countertop, looking down at the general, his waist positioned between her knees. His hands ran up and down the sides of her thighs, fingers tracing patterns on the fabric hard enough for her to feel it on her skin. Her face was flushed from the alcohol. "If that apple is Skudene, Os Alta is at  _least_ this far away," he continued, his hands moving upward to her waist, her ribcage. "If you want to be precise."  


His breath was heavy, and she felt her own constrict in her chest. "Being precise seems important," she whispered. "In this sort of thing."

He nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off hers. "Very important."

"Are there," she swallowed, "other things? That you think might be important right now?"

Their faces were close, their breath mingling together. His hands moved back down her thighs, then underneath the hem of her skirt, pushing it up. "I can think of a couple," he murmured, and she felt the vibration of his voice in her arms looped around his neck, in his waist that was pressed between her knees, his hands on her bare skin. He leaned in, his breath brushing her ear. "If you want me to show you."

The night was soft, and the alcohol dulled the pain in her stomach. There was peace for Ravka, for right now – even if that couldn't last, even if  _this_ couldn't last ...  


_Enjoy what you have while you have it._ She nodded mutely, not trusting her voice. Her husband smiled and pushed her skirt up further before bending and replacing his hands with his lips, his tongue, his teeth.  


* * *

The new year found Ravka in a relative peace. The Americans had agreed to fund the integrated energy system that Alina had built and both neighboring countries had deescalated the borders as requested by the United States – Fjerda had even sent an ambassador back to Os Alta. The year started with a feeling of hope, with a tentative belief that this peace might last for a time, that there might be a chance to make something salvageable out of a country that had been ravaged by war for so long.

It was in that peace that Baghra died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've begun our initial descent – please fasten your seat belts, put up your tray tables and look back longingly at whatever sort of weird mile high club we had going. Some combination of Alina and I are flying this thing so no guarantees about a smooth landing. 
> 
> Also, over 100k words?? I legit have no idea how this happened and thank you all so much for your encouragement along the way, it has meant so much to me. <3 <3 <3
> 
> For those of you keeping track, there will be a little bit longer than typical delay before the next chapter; I'm going to be traveling and won't have reliable enough internet to plan on publishing anything. I SHOULD have some writing time though, so I'll try to make it up to you when I return.


	19. Chapter 19

There are moments when everything turns on a hairpin, when the world changes in the space between breaths.

The note had come while they were eating dinner after a quiet new years day. They'd woken up late – Alina had, at least, and the general was still in the soft pants he wore to bed when she made her way to the kitchen. She’d blushed slightly in spite of herself when he indicated a mug of coffee on the counter she had occupied the night before, a ghost of a smile on his lips as he followed her to her warroom. He occupied the chair in the corner, making calls as he watched her, and she half-listened to the conversations, paying just enough attention to know there was nothing she needed to concern herself with. There was a hospital that needed repair, the tricky matter of navigating mountain roads to get children to school, troop movements on the southern border – 

"Remember that we can’t do anything that will ruin our cover with our neighbors and the Americans. Don’t let Shu Han compromise our position with Fjerda," she commented after that particular phone call, not looking up from the charts on her laptop. 

"I remember." 

Dinner was nearly over when they heard angry whispers from beyond the dining room door. This alone was unusual – Alina could count on one hand the number of times the general had been interrupted during a meal with her. The whispers continued until one of the voices ended in a hiss; after a brief pause, the door opened wide enough for Genya and Ivan to walk in. 

" _Soverenyi_ ," Genya nodded, her attention on the general, who raised an eyebrow in question. They stood, unmoving, until Genya poked Ivan in the side with her elbow. He gave her a sullen glance and she indicated the table with her head. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and put it on the table, retreating quickly once it had been delivered. The general folded his napkin neatly beside him on the table and opened the note. 

He read, Alina watching as his eyes moved over the words once, twice. It was a short note, couldn't have been more than a few sentences, but he didn't look up, didn't acknowledge her. She glanced at Genya, but her friend's face betrayed nothing, carefully stripped of the laughter that typically lay just below the surface. Alina didn't know what the message said, but there were several possibilities that would be very, very bad for her. She gripped the fabric of the chair until her fingers burned, willing herself to remain calm as her husband read and reread the message. The tenth time his eyes returned to the beginning of the page, Alina spoke. "What is it?"

He finished reading it once more before responding. "Leave." 

His voice was low and raw, and Alina's heart rate sped up perceptibly. "What?"

"Leave." When he looked up and met her gaze, her terror changed to a different kind of fear. When his eyes met hers, she realized that this couldn't have anything to do with her, couldn't be anything she'd done. There was none of the anger, none of the danger that they would have if it had been.

Instead, there was nothing. 

There was no thought she could see behind his face, no emotion. The mask he often wore, as carefully impassive as it was, still carried the sense of perception, the feeling that he was watching, paying attention. But now it was clear he wasn't seeing her at all. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw Genya make a quick motion with her hand, a  _let's go_. Alina opened her mouth and her friend shook her head, slightly but emphatically. Her husband didn’t look at her as she stood, his gaze didn’t follow her out the door that Genya closed behind them as, in hushed tones, she told Alina what the note had said. 

There had been a bullet, or maybe several. She would never find out more than that and it didn't really matter – one bullet was just as lethal as an entire magazine to an old woman climbing the side of a mountain, crossing the border to Fjerda in the snow. 

Alina fidgeted in the bedroom, pacing the length a dozen times before sitting in the chair in the corner, chewing the edge of her fingernail, waiting. Her emotions warred with each other, the sympathetic pain of his mother’s death at war with her own guilty relief at not having been found out. She listened, expecting to hear yelling, expecting footsteps, expecting  _something_. 

But nothing happened. A few hours later she changed into sleep clothes and opened the door to the bedroom a crack before getting into bed, leaving the lights on. She didn't fall asleep until the small hours of the morning, and when she woke she was alone, the lights still on, door ajar just as she'd left it.

* * *

The grief of Aleksander Morozova was a shattered, empty thing. Alina watched as it hollowed out his features and carved new canyons behind his eyes. She watched him from doorways as he sat at tables, staring at but not seeing the wood grains. She examined him through her eyelashes, feigning sleep as he sat unmoving in the chair next to the bed. She saw the grief tighten around his neck with every breath. In meetings she held him in her peripheral vision as he sat, face partially covered by the long fingers of one hand, the space behind his eyes yawning and vacant. 

He still gave orders, shook hands. He had built for himself a reputation of careful removal, and if he seemed more removed now, it wouldn’t strike most as unusual.

But Alina saw. When they were alone, when he looked at her, he didn't see her at all, and if she spoke he didn’t respond. She half-expected to find him back to normal the fourth day after Baghra's death – hadn't it only taken Alina four days to recover from her adoptive parents' deaths, after all? – but the days stretched into a week, stretched into two, the silence between them now a third person in the house. 

For the first time since their wedding, she didn’t know how to handle him. There was something she didn’t know, something she was missing that she needed to fit the pieces of him and his mother and her death together, to make them whole again. Who had Baghra been, and who had she been to him? His mother had wanted him to be good – what did that mean to either of them? Had she been trying to die, and if so, was it to help the war or stop it? 

All she had were questions, and all she could do was watch as grief for his mother consumed her husband. She watched from a distance as he fell farther into emptiness. She watched him floating in the sea, as unable to pull him to shore as she was unwilling to let him drown.

* * *

Alina wasn’t sure whether Baghra’s death was a secret or if the secret was that her husband had a mother in the first place; either way, she was almost jarred to discover that life in the lab continued as it had before. It was here that her practice in carrying herself in the way people wanted to see her came in handy – whatever her concerns over her husband, none of her colleagues seemed to notice.

Nadia had been doing an exceptional job of producing and installing the new energy systems. The funding from the Americans had come through and she had taken several people, including Nikolai, to go set up the systems in the eastern side of the country. This trip lasted a few days and provided Alina time to meet with Zoya, Ana, Davna and Harshaw about the project that they'd been working on. And, for the first time, to test it.

The five of them headed in the opposite direction from where Nikolai had gone, a three-hour drive that Ana compacted into a terrifying two. Alina had ditched Fedyor that morning, where he stood outside a completely secure room that didn’t have an exit – at least, not officially. Ana had created a second exit, of course, and Alina felt only a twinge of guilt at leaving him standing in front of an empty room for the day.

The last half hour of the ride was all off-road, Ana barreling through land that Alina was fairly certain was never meant to be driven over and that it was possible no one had ever seen before. The passengers got out of the car gratefully as Ana hopped out and opened the trunk in the back. Alina walked over and helped her lift the heavy contraption out of the back.

Zoya sucked in a breath, hard. "You had a Shadow in the back of the car?" 

Ana rolled her eyes and she and Alina kept walking east, taking it far away from the car. "How exactly did you think we were going to test this thing without one?"

"I thought," Zoya faltered, regained herself. "It should have already been here, waiting."

"Yeah, that's a great idea, leave a bomb in the middle of the forest where anyone can take it. Get the filter, will you? It's beneath the seat you were sitting on."

_Security through obscurity_. Alina smiled.  

Forty-five minutes later, everything was set up and the y 'd driven the car back another couple miles from where they'd left the weapon. Ana pulled out a small black box with a keypad and held it out for Alina's password before taking it back and entering her own.

There was a ten-second countdown followed by silence – no explosion, no indication that anything had happened. Alina swallowed hard, fighting the bile that rose in her throat as she remembered standing on a balcony, seeing the black writhing mass, hearing the screams – 

"Think it's time to head back?" This from Harshaw.

"By the time we get there it should be fine," Davna answered unconcernedly. Though they'd been working with the Shadow for months, she was the only person who seemed unfazed by having just detonated one.

The place where they’d parked earlier appeared undisturbed when they returned, but they still opened the door cautiously, walking slowly along the path. When they entered the clearing, they all fell silent. Where the bomb had been was now a eight meter width of grey sand – the material within the bomb's blast radius broken apart into the same dull matter that now comprised the former  _divizionik_ camp. The rest of the clearing was untouched, almost as if a perfect circle had been carved out of the earth. Alina fought the panic that rose in her chest. 

"It didn't work," Harshaw whispered. 

Her eyes searched the grey sands frantically, hoping for some sort of indication that it had, that their work hadn't all been in vain.  _Foolish girl_ , Baghra’s voice echoed in her head. _Foolish, foolish girl._

Davna walked up to the edge of the grey circle, then right in. Zoya clamped a hand over her mouth as Davna used her hands to push the sands aside. 

A minute later she stood, bringing with her a long, black film that had been buried beneath the sands of the broken-apart matter. She held it high.

Zoya stifled a sob from behind her hand. "It  _worked_." 

_It worked. It worked. It worked._

* * *

"Aleksander." 

He didn't look up from where he sat in one of the living rooms. He was leaning back in a large chair in the dark, staring at nothing; it was far into the evening but he hadn’t moved since dinner. She turned on a lamp, moved to position herself in front of him. "Aleksander." 

He hesitated, as if considering whether or not it was worth the effort, before turning towards her slowly. When he finally met her gaze, there was none of the ice she was accustomed to, none of the danger.

None of  _him_. 

"Tell me what happened." She didn’t work to keep the plaintive note out of her voice.

"I don't." 

She thought he might not finish the sentence, but after a few breaths, he did. "Want to talk about it."

_That's_ obvious enough. "You have a country to run." 

"I'm running it." 

It was the longest conversation they'd had since his mother died. She waited, hoping he’d say more. When it was clear he wouldn’t, she lifted the papers in her hand. "I have the next moves planned out for getting the information we want from Fjerda. Can you look at them?"

"Leave them."

"They need your signature, and we’re going to need to discuss them. Can we go over –"

"Leave them on the table. I'll see that they're done."

Her eyes narrowed. "You typically want to examine and criticize every detail before you give an order."

"Leave them," he turned his head back towards the nothing he’d been staring at before. "On the table." 

From the moment she’d met him, the command in his voice had been striking, imposing. Now there was nothing. She stared at her husband, willing him to glare at her, to be dangerous again.

Nothing.

"You can't run a country like this," she whispered. She wanted him to yell at her, to tell her to leave, to insist he was fine. Instead, he closed his eyes.

She held her breath, wishing, her jaw tightening painfully. After a few minutes, she dropped the papers on the table and left. 

* * *

Alina looked up from her computer and rubbed her eyes, sore from staring at the screen. Nikolai was a few workstations away; his guard was sitting on the edge of a table near Alina, watching Zoya throw herself at him. Mal’s gaze tracked Zoya’s movements with a sort of practiced ease that she recognized in Fedyor and Ivan – bored but not relaxed. Alina exhaled, rubbed her eyes again before walking over and leaning on the table beside him.

She stood there for a minute, wondering if Mal would speak first. He kept his gaze and attention on Nikolai, but even after all these months she could still read him, still heard the shift in his breathing that indicated he knew she was there. 

She'd put this off long enough – he'd let her put it off – but if she was going to do this, she should just do it now. She rubbed her heel on the ground, one last delay, before pushing herself up and seating herself fully on the table next to him. "You didn’t come all this way to avoid me." 

He bent his head over his crossed arms, exhaled quietly. "Hi to you, too."

_Fair_. She looked at him and found herself fighting the urge to push back the hair that fell in front of his face. She sat on her hands. "Why are you here, Mal?"  

His lips twisted, unamused. "Maybe for the same reason you let me stay."

" _Let_ you?" 

"You could have made me leave." He finally glanced her way, the blue of his eyes sharp even at this angle. "You didn't."

He was right, she supposed, though that wasn't a decision she'd made consciously. Her brow furrowed. "You and I – we're over. You know that, right?"

"I do." There was no resentment in his voice, and surprisingly little hurt. After a moment, he sighed. "I was shitty to you sometimes." Alina couldn't hide her surprise to hear him say it, and he gave a begrudging gesture of acknowledgement. "You were like … my land. The sun. There and necessary and taken for granted. It took me a while to figure that out, after you left. A lot of fighting and ... well. I figured it out, eventually." 

She nodded and didn't reply. He waited a while, as if he was expecting her to say something, before he added, "You were shitty to me, too."

She gaped. Alina had never come home drunk, had never ignored his texts. Had never gone into jealous fits over his coworkers. "What did I ever do to you?" 

He opened his mouth to say something, closed it. One deep breath later, "It was what you  _didn’t_ do. You stopped talking to me. You cut me out." 

Now she was angry. "That was because you were jealous of everything I was doing. And," she indicated Mal's assignment across the room, "you were exceptionally jealous of Nikolai."

"I was jealous of what you were doing because you seemed to care about it. I was jealous of Nikolai because you actually  _talked_ to him. Your face would," he gestured towards his cheeks, "light up. It hadn't lit up like that for me in a long time." 

She let out a breath of disbelief. "You could have said something."

"You act like I didn't try." More silence. She was wondering if this entire conversation had been a mistake when he said quietly, "I came here planning to stay, you know."

"What?"

"Nikolai thought I could get you to come back, that seeing your past would remind you of what you were missing. I didn't think it would work, didn't think you cared enough. But I decided that if Nikolai was going back I was going to ... " he searched for the word with his hands, "stay anyway. Defect." 

That was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. "That's crazy." 

He raised his eyebrows. "You did it."

He was missing the point entirely. "Mal, defecting would be  _treason_. If the Americans hadn't executed you for that, my –" She stopped herself, blinked. 

He gave an unamused laugh. "Your husband would have?" She clenched her jaw, unwilling to admit that that had been exactly what she was going to say. "This isn't who you are, Alina."

Her mouth tightened. "You don't know who I am. You haven't for a long time."

"I knew you and I know you, probably better than anyone here. Even if you wish I didn't." 

"And how's that?" she spat out, truly irritated now.

"I know you're brilliant enough that you're only staying here because you're planning something exceptionally stupid."

She glared at him and he held her stare for a few seconds before sighing and looking down at his shoes. "You were saving me from myself, for a long time. I didn't realize it then, but I do now. And I’m here for when you need saving from yourself, too."

"I don’t need saving."

"Are you sure?" 

She inhaled sharply. This hadn’t been what she’d expected – anger, maybe, hurt. But this … "I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything, then. It wouldn't be the first time." She narrowed her eyes, and he gestured apology. "I'm here when, if, you need me. And if not ... " He looked back up at Nikolai, and the very steep lean Zoya had affected over the table and gave a wry laugh. "At least standing guard outside Nikolai's bedroom is unlikely to get boring."

* * *

Alina sat in bed, laptop propped in her lap, biting her thumbnail as she through the personnel files for some sort of answer, some sort of insight. She'd tried to look up her husband's records the day she had gotten access to the system, but of course she hadn't been given authorization to go into those. Unlike with Ana, where her access gave her enough pieces of the puzzle to get a sense of the picture, she couldn't get close to records of anything related to the general or his past. Everything she tried was a dead end.

Information was hard to find, answers were proving elusive. She was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t get what she needed this way.

_Talk to me, Aleksander._ She rubbed a hand across her face and glanced at the empty side of the bed next to her. _Talk to me_. 

She gave up looking for the evening, gave up waiting for him to come to bed. She slammed the laptop closed and pushed it onto the pillow next to her as she turned out the light. 

It was hours before she fell asleep.

* * *

The next morning, she found her first grey hair.

* * *

The lunchroom was loud, and Alina sat at a corner of the table alone, head propped on a fist, thinking. 

"Oh, no," Genya said by way of greeting, setting down her food tray across from Alina. "Not you, too."

Alina shoved the herring across her plate with a fork. "Not me what?"

"You're sulking. Stop sulking. It gives you wrinkles."

"I'm not sulking." 

Genya rolled her eyes. "And lying gives you – well, you're just a terrible liar."

Alina tugged at her gold bracelet nervously as Ivan came and sat next to Genya; she raised her eyebrows at him. "Shouldn’t you be with the general?"

Ivan had already begun inhaling the contents of his plate, but managed to get out "he’s home" between bites. 

Alina blinked. Her husband usually didn’t get home until she did. "Already?"

He swallowed, having consumed an impressive amount of food in a terrifically short amount of time. "He didn’t leave."

Genya's mouth tightened and she turned to Alina. "That's it. What the hell is going on?" 

"I don't  _know_. He isn't talking to me."  

"Well," Genya replied, eyes widening meaningfully. "You need to make him."

"No one makes him do anything," Ivan grunted.

Genya placed a hand on his. "Ivan, sweetheart, you're very strong but you don't really know anything about how things work." She turned back to Alina. "You need to fix this." 

Alina twirled her fork in the herring she had pulverized. It truly was a vile food.  "What if –" 

" _Alina_ ," Genya interrupted, and the look she gave Alina – face tense, stern – said that she knew she had just kept Alina from making the very stupid mistake of voicing that thought aloud. Then there was a deliberate shift in her demeanor, and she smiled, her eyes nearly twinkling. "I can't keep taking his phone calls forever. If I have to talk to that ridiculous chief of staff one more time –" 

"You love talking on the phone," Ivan interjected, not looking up from his methodical devouring of his food. 

"Talking to Grace is a delight in and of itself," Genya agreed, rolling her eyes. 

Alina chewed the inside of her cheek as Genya carried the conversation through the rest of the meal – even with a largely absent leader there was an astonishing amount going on in the country, and she knew about all of it. When Genya stood to get more tea, Alina switched her plate with Ivan's empty one, earning her a begrudgingly grateful look from the guard. 

She stood abruptly, causing Fedyor to jump to his feet in alarm. "I have to go." She glanced at Ivan. "Tell Genya goodbye for me, would you?"

* * *

She got home early that afternoon to find the general in one of the living rooms, reading those manilla folders he still insisted on carrying. He didn't acknowledge her and she left him there until dinnertime, when he joined her at the table. She watched as he picked up his fork and knife and began to eat, robotically slicing, chewing, swallowing, fork scraping against the china. He didn't look at her, so he didn't see her watching him, didn't notice her fingers curl around the handle of her knife.

He didn't notice until the tip of the blade was pressed beneath his jaw.

He paused, fork midway to his mouth, and slowly shifted his gaze towards her. The silence that had lived with them settled, then tensed, aware that it would have to give. She wasn’t going to be the one to break it.

It was nearly a minute before he spoke. "You have my attention, Alina."

"I should certainly hope so."

She saw that he was waiting for her to continue, so she didn’t. "You're not going to kill me."

"Don't sound so disappointed." 

The flash of anger in his eyes told her she was right where she wanted to be. She licked her lips.

"It's been a month. You can talk to me about Baghra's death," his jaw clenched hard and she increased the pressure on his throat slightly, "or you can end it all right here."

He stayed perfectly still, rage just beginning to course through his features. "You wouldn't understand."

"I've lost four parents," she replied, matching his tone. "Try me."

His neck tensed and a drop of blood formed at the tip of her knife, spilling down his neck and staining the collar of his shirt with a small red blossom. "What they did to her –" he stopped himself and closed his eyes. When he spoke again it was through gritted teeth. "Now  _twice_ –" 

Alina let the silence settle around them – this was a new silence, the kind that she'd learned often said more than words. She watched his jaw muscles bulge, let him hear his own breath.

"Ravka needs you now or it doesn't need you at all." Her voice was low. "So you need to decide if you're coming back, now."

He opened his eyes, hatred for her and himself evident in what he said next. "And if. I can’t?"

"You know the options, Aleksander." He didn’t move as she dropped the knife on the table between them and leaned in closer. "Pick one."

* * *

Alina walked up the familiar stairs in the small hours of the morning, one of the night guards trailing behind her. When she turned into the hallway and saw Ivan standing several yards away, she knew she’d come to the right place. She nodded to him as she cracked the door quietly, leaving her own guard with him. The familiar crackle of the fire guided her as she padded down the hallway.

He was sitting on the floor, back against the chair she’d occupied during her Ravkan lessons. He’d pushed the coffee table out of the way to stretch his legs in front of him and now he stared into the fire, unmoving. As she approached, she saw he had one hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of vodka. He looked at her, his slightly accusatory and blurry gaze dropping from her face to her hands before leaning his head back on the cushion and staring at her down his nose. It annoyed her that he’d found a way to look down at her even from the floor.

“You didn’t come to kill me, did you?”

She sat, propping her back against the chair Baghra had always occupied, tucking her legs underneath her to avoid hitting his. He sighed and pulled his feet in, still holding the bottle in one hand as he looped his elbows around his knees.

“You’re drunk.”

“Not drunk,” he corrected, his voice thick but controlled, “drinking.” He held the uncapped bottle out to her. “Catch up.”

She took it and drank, letting the coolness of it burn down her throat. When she lowered the bottle from her lips, he circled his hand in an exasperated  _keep going_. She took a longer drink, then another, before putting the bottle on the floor beside the chair. 

The fire cast shadows across his face as he stared at her, an occasional flame lighting his iris. They sat in silence for several minutes before he turned and looked into the fire again.

“You held a knife to my throat.” He spoke conversationally, almost bored. Though he’d washed his skin she saw that he hadn’t changed out of the shirt he’d bled onto earlier. “I could have you executed for that.”

She glanced at him. “You won’t.”

“No,” he said slowly. “I won’t.”

Alina was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol – she hadn’t touched her dinner or her lunch so her stomach had nothing else in it. She was tired and hungry and felt her skin flushing from the vodka and the fire. She watched her husband watch the flames, watched as something in his eyes began to shift, then solidify. She moved closer to him, scooting on the carpet until their feet touched, then reached out to touch his cheek.

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist when she was just inches from his face. He turned to look at her, and even though his face was lax from vodka she realized he was different. There were no longer endless plains of grief stretching behind his eyes, no chasms he could fall into. His grief had compressed itself, become something much harder; it had crystalized into anger.

She was looking, once again, at a dangerous man. 

"Alina." His voice was low, almost a groan. The air in the room pressed down harder on her than it had a moment before.

“Aleksander,” she whispered back, and before she had finished he had thrown himself at her, pinning her against the floor, close enough to the fire that she felt the waves of its heat. His fingers tore angrily at her clothing. His lips pressed hard against her smile.

* * *

She'd fallen asleep in front of the fire and woke up to a light sheen of sweat coating the side of her body nearest the flames. She pushed herself up, groggy from heat and sleep and alcohol, and squinted at the man next to her.

He was partially dressed, arms looped around his knees like before, staring into the fire. The flames cast shadows against his face, darkening the hollows of his cheeks in a way that could have looked sullen. But she saw the tension in the muscles of his chest, the deliberate way his fingers gripped his forearm. 

He didn't acknowledge her movement, but he must have heard. "I’m ready," he said.

She rubbed an eye with the heel of her hand, pushed herself into a seated position, grabbing her undershirt and pulling it over her head. "To talk about it?"

"No."  

When he turned to her, he was every bit as frightening as she'd hoped. She bit the inside of her cheek. 

"Ready," he continued, slate eyes hard with the grim determination of a general, "for you to put on the ring."

* * *

Back in their bedroom, Alina lifted her hand, testing the weight of the ring, examining the way the light reflected through the smaller stones before being swallowed by the black heat in the center. A stolen Fjerdan treasure, a ring that could start a war. She wasn't ready for it yet, not quite, but a spark of adrenaline ran through her body and she shivered slightly, anticipating –

There was a movement in the corner of the room and she startled, turning quickly, hands raised as if to fight, but there was nothing there. No breeze that could have stirred a curtain, nothing on the chair that could have taken flight. No movement at all. 

She waited for her pulse to slow, rubbing her thumb carefully over her scar, before turning back to the ring. 


	20. Chapter 20

"These results are promising." Alina and Nikolai had their heads bent close together over the most recent report from the integrated energy systems that they had set up now in three different villages. It was only the middle of February but they were starting to see the improvement in the solar panel performance from the slightly longer days. The sun would catapult into prominence in April, just as the winds were beginning to die off for the season – or that was the idea, at any rate. She was glad that they were beginning to see the photovoltaic cells picking up their production already. 

"They are," Nikolai agreed, looking at Alina from the side of his eye. There was something in his expression, but she couldn't be bothered to deal with it. Not right now, anyway. 

"I wonder," she flipped to the fifth page of the report and then back to the first, tracing her finger along a series of numbers on each page and comparing them, "if it makes sense to prioritize putting our next installation in the far west of the country. Maybe … Subkin. We don't have anything there yet, and given the budget your country has generously provided it would make sense to have demonstrable improvement across that entire region of Ravka." 

"The western edge of Ravka?"

"Yeah," Alina answered vaguely. There was a number that didn't quite make sense to her, and she flipped another few pages in to find its counterpart from Fryakovo. 

"And let me guess, you would like me and both of my guards to help set that up with Nadia's crew. And we'll be gone for, what, a week? Two?"

His tone caught her attention and she looked up. "I was thinking along those lines. Is there a problem with that plan, Nikolai?" 

"Is there a problem –" He dropped his hand from where it had been anxiously combing through his hair and turned to face her more fully. "You're picking the farthest villages deliberately, Alina. You're trying to get rid of me. Of us." 

She blinked. There were certainly benefits other than the one she'd named to picking far away towns – they're the least likely to get demolished if Fjerda ever figured out what she was doing, for one – but keeping Nikolai and Mal out of the lab for a while hadn't _not_ been on that list of benefits. She just hadn't realized it was so obvious. "That's ridiculous," she said, hopefully convincingly.  


"Is it?" His eyes narrowed a little and she imagined his gaze piercing through the series of half-truths and deceptions she'd been providing. He wouldn't like what he found. 

She switched to an offensive stance. "You said you were here to help on this project and to be my friend." She let her voice crack a little bit there, and for all that it was deliberate it wasn't feigned. "I need to be able to know that I can trust you on this."

It was hardly fair, pulling out the trust card, when she was pretty clearly not trustworthy at the moment. But, though she cringed to admit it to herself, she knew her friendship mattered to him, knew _she_ did, and that with all his misgivings he wouldn't do anything to sacrifice that. The staring contest was a short one, and it ended with his hand covering hers.   


"I'll go," he agreed, voice low. "But you're going to have to tell me what's going on. At some point."

She let her relief show in her smile. "Of course, Nikolai."

* * *

  "Alina." 

She jumped in the dark hallway, her hand on the doorknob to her warroom, and cursed herself for letting the general startle her yet again. She'd been at the lab late, preparing for Nikolai and Nadia and everyone to set up the next installations as soon as possible and had missed the typically scheduled dinner with her husband. Down the hall she saw a dim light from the open door of his study and she walked towards it, stopping once she'd reached the center of the room. 

She hadn't been in the room since near the beginning of their marriage and she studied the surroundings, taking in everything while pretending not to do so. The furnishings were still bare as she remembered, and filing cabinets lined the walls, locked. The desk he sat behind had papers sparsely arranged on top of it. 

It had been slightly over a week since she'd held a knife to his neck and she still watched him carefully, looking for cracks in the anger, anything that would indicate that his grief hadn't solidified enough and that he might once again plunge into whatever abyss had claimed him initially. So far she had been satisfied that he was holding it together, had witnessed the controlled fury seep into his movements at dinner, in bed. She had found the punching bag in their gym on the floor the other morning, partially ripped in two. She'd smiled; he was doing just fine. 

" _Da, Soverenyi_?" She bowed deeply and his lids drooped slightly as he watched her.   


He flicked his fingers towards a chair. "I have something that will interest you. Sit."

She dropped herself into one of the uncomfortable chairs positioned across from the desk. He drummed the fingers of one hand on the contents of the open manilla folder in front of him before closing it and handing it to her across the desk. "The Americans' file on you."

"On _me_?" He nodded and she took it from him, opened it and began to skim, flipping through the pages quickly. There were sections on her early life, her time in the foster system, her university career, and it seemed to contain as much information about her as _she_ knew. Several sections were prominently about Mal and made references to other files that she appeared not to have.  


After a few minutes a thought occurred to her and she lifted her head. The general was looking down at the papers of another folder, jotting notes in the margins. "Where did you get this?"

"From Grace."

It took Alina a moment to place the name. "Secretary Lantsov's Chief of Staff Grace? Why would she give us this?"

He didn't look up from his papers. "Because she values her career."

Handing the leader of Ravka classified American files wasn't typically a move that would further one's career. Alina blinked. "You're blackmailing her."

"Mmm."

He wasn't watching so she frowned to herself. "And you neglected to mention this because?" 

"I didn't neglect it – it wasn't relevant until now." 

"You have a history of omitting relevant information," she pointed out. "And lies of omission are still lies." 

"There isn't enough time in the day for me to fill you in on everything I did when I was ambassador, Alina."

He'd have to, later, but now was not the time for that. The general still hadn't looked at her. "What do you have on her?"

"Unethical relations, failing to guard classified information. Enough to keep her from working in Washington again." 

Alina looked back at the folder, skimmed the page she was on and flipped to the next one. _And now this, which I'm pretty sure worse than either of those_. If he'd gotten that on her when he was ambassador it would explain her hostility from the moment she stepped off that plane, and he was focused enough on the long game that she could believe that he knew it would be useful someday, even if he hadn't been sure exactly how. But for an ambassador to get information on unethical relations and guarding classified information ...  


She snapped her head up from the papers. "You fucked her." He didn't reply. "You totally fucked her!"

He continued not looking at her. "Don't be crass."

"Because crassness is the problem here, not using sex to distract and manipulate people." Now he did raise his head, and she pressed her lips together. "And don't look at me like that. I have some experience being on the other end of this arrangement."

"That was different." 

She let out a loud exhale. This did explain why Grace seemed to hate Ravka and everything and everyone in it – especially the two of them. She rubbed her eyes. "Sometimes I almost forget what an asshole you are."

A ghost of a smile appeared. "This from the person who married me to avoid being tried for war crimes."

"War crimes _you committed,_ which proves my point rather nicely." She turned back to the papers in her lap and flipped through a few more pages. "Why did you want this, anyway? It's a little late to do a prenup background check and I already know all of this about me."   


He turned back to his own papers. "Keep reading."

She read in silence for another few minutes, skimming through the achievements and demerits of her high school career, including the time she was sent to detention when another kid had punched her and she'd dislocated his kneecap in return. She had never been a fighter but she was great at physics and it turns out that human knees are fragile things – just 14 pounds of pressure at a 45-degree angle was enough to dislocate them, and she'd kept that little piece of information handy. The file even had the apology note that the kid's entitled parents had been insistent enough that _she_ had to write to _him_. She was torn between thoughts of _how'd they get that??_ and _YIKES_.  


She turned a few more pages, and then she saw it. The air whooshed out of her lungs and the general looked up at the sound, but her eyes were fixed on the page. It took her a minute to recover her breath. "They know," she whispered. 

He nodded. "We've been going at it the wrong way – Fjerda's far too conservative in who they allow to access information for us to get this inconspicuously. But the American network … " He waved. "It's better if we can have one of their allies do the spying for us." 

Her eyes stared at the page, trying to absorb every word. It was there, it was all there, and the Americans _knew_ this whole time they'd _known they knew_ –  


They knew who had been responsible for the massacre at Dva Stolba all those years ago. They knew who had killed her family. 

She read the report with a horror and a hunger that a year ago she could never have imagined could exist at the same time. Everything fascinated and repelled her. When she finally tore her eyes away her husband was watching her intently, fingertips gently pressed together in front of his lips. "Do they suspect the rest?" she asked.

"That you're going after Fjerda? No." He shook his head. "It would be in that file and I've read it all, twice. There's nothing that indicates that they think you might pose a threat outside of your scientific ability." His lips twisted slightly. "Your background doesn't suggest it, apparently, though I can't help but think they missed something."

_The most important thing_. She swallowed. "So we know who to go after now. And we have to find them."  


"I'm already working on it. We'll find them soon. And then," the general leaned forward and smiled – not a nice smile, not romantic. Not empty. This smile was all tight lips and cold hard revenge and one of the things she liked most about him. "They're yours."

* * *

The next evening she made it home in time to eat with her husband. There was no news on finding the people responsible for the massacre of Dva Stolba, so they ate quietly, her mind going over the remainder of preparations needed to get the crew out to install the next energy system. It would be another day or two. She ate the food without tasting it, focused on other things.

The general slid a box towards her. It was hard, polished. Maroon, again. She looked up at him. "More jewelry?" 

"Open it."

"Did your –" She almost asked if his mom had stolen this one, too, but stopped herself in time. "Is this also a liberated Fjerdan treasure?" 

He exhaled, aware of what she hadn't said. "It's Ravkan. Come by honestly." 

_As honestly as anything else_. "What's it for?"  


His lips pressed into a line, irritated that she wasn't doing exactly as he'd suggested. When she didn't move, he sighed. "Your anniversary of coming to Ravka." 

She blinked. It had been a year already, but she hadn't noticed – and had it only been a year? She thought she must have aged a decade, that she wouldn't recognize the Alina that had watched with such wonder as the earth dropped away from the plane a year ago. 

"Open it." 

She took the box and cracked the lid. The necklace was gold, inlaid with alternating clear and dark stones – diamonds? – but those were just adornments; the real jewel of the necklace was the gold work itself, pieces that fit together organically, almost like a living thing. She traced it lightly with a fingertip. 

He took it from her and with a few turns undid a clasp, then stood behind her and draped it around her collarbone. It fit as if it had been designed for her, contouring to the shape of her bone structure. Light, though it looked otherwise. A few more turns and it was fastened behind her.

He moved to the other end of the table and examined her. "It suits you." 

Her hand found where she knew the clasp to be, but felt nothing there. "I'm not going to be able to get this off."

"Doesn't bother me." 

There was something in his eyes beneath that ever-present anger that she couldn't quite place. She glanced down at the gold bracelet that she'd worn nearly constantly since he'd given her six months before and a thought occurred to her. Her lips quirked. "Have you put tracking devices in my jewelry?" 

His hands rested on the back of the chair across from her, fingers relaxed. "Don't be ridiculous." 

She pursed her lips. "It's hardly paranoid for me to think –"

"I said ridiculous, not paranoid. You of all people know how hard it would be to get a reliable source of energy in something like your bracelet."

She leaned back in her chair and lifted an eyebrow. "Too hard for you?" 

"Too impractical." He lifted his eyes to meet hers. "It's easier to track a device that already has GPS and that you keep charged." 

_Like my phone_. She laughed, surprised that that hadn't occurred to her yet. When she looked back at him, his gaze was unapologetic and soft. "Thank you," she said quietly.   


His eyes searched her face for a moment, and she wondered if he was also thinking of their first meeting in the zoo, or of something much darker. When he responded, it was impossible to tell. 

"I'm glad I found you, Alina."

* * *

She lay on her side on the dark sheets, facing away from the general. Her eyes had long since adjusted to the dark and the shadows that surrounded their bed had long since become familiar to her. She breathed evenly, deeply, imitating sleep. Behind her, the general did the same.

It had unnerved her, at the beginning of their marriage, how her husband never seemed to sleep when they were in the same room. In the first months of their relationship she hadn't noticed it too much – she had fallen asleep quickly and knew that he slept poorly but assumed, for the most part, that he was just an early riser. After the wedding, she thought that it was perhaps a test, looking to see if she would try to kill him in his sleep.

But the fact that he continued, even after she'd held a knife to his jugular – it was clearly not that. Whatever the reason, she'd learned a thing or two during the course of their marriage, and she continued to breathe evenly as, out of view of the general, her fingers traced the necklace around her throat.

A year in Ravka felt like a lifetime, and she struggled to remember a life before it. Had she been a university student? Had there been a time when she really hadn't known who her parents were, when she hadn't been part of the military, where every part of her hadn't burned with the need for revenge? How had that only been a year ago?

And what about a year from _now_?  


A stray moonbeam hit one of the stones and reflected onto the wall as the necklace shifted slightly under her fingers – a giveaway that she wasn't sleeping if the general had needed one. He didn't disturb her. 

She dropped her hand from her neck and saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. It didn't startle her this time, and she didn't turn towards it; she knew there was nothing there. It was a flicker, a thought. 

She exhaled deeply and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.

* * *

Alina was in the lab early a couple mornings later, going over the work that Harshaw and Davna had done the day before, when the door slammed and her lieutenant began making her way across the room. Alina nodded a greeting. "Early for you, _leytenant_. Nikolai kick you out?"  


Zoya shrugged and raised an eyebrow suggestively, which in and of itself meant nothing since Alina knew she'd never deny a rumor like that. "I figured I'd find you here alone."

Alina looked up, glanced to one side of the lab where Fedyor was getting her another cup of coffee. "That was something you were hoping for?" 

Zoya leaned in. "You need to stop keeping this a secret." 

Alina turned back to the papers. "I appreciate the advice."

"I mean it." Alina glanced up and saw her lieutenant uncharacteristically serious. "And not for your sake, which –" she waved a hand, as if to dismiss that as a reason she might care about this whole thing at all. "But you have other people's careers on the line here. Our _lives_."   


Alina snorted. "I hardly think that working on this is the sort of thing one gets executed for."

Zoya cocked her head to one side. "If this goes poorly for us, do you think that any of us could get jobs elsewhere?" She didn't answer – it wasn't, in fact, something that she'd thought of at all. "This may be a game to you, Sarkov-Morozova-or-whatever, but I have other people in the division to think about besides you."

Alina's face was grim. "This isn't a game to me."

"Then stop playing around," Zoya snapped, suddenly serious. "Make it official or knock it off already. No matter if my hometown has reliable electricity or not, I don't like the idea of moving back in with my parents and Harshaw doesn't have anywhere to go. You have a chance to come out of this ahead, but it's not going to last forever." 

"I can handle this." Alina's voice was low, dangerous, but Zoya ignored the tone and rubbed her eyes, looking more tired than Alina had seen her. 

"I hope so."

Fedyor came back then with the coffee and nodded to them both. The lieutenant looked up at him and batted her eyes, her expression back to the supercilious Zoya that Alina recognized. "You bring any for me, sweetheart?"

"Bite me, Nazyalensky."

Her smile showed enough teeth to make Alina wonder if she was planning on taking him up on it. She stood and brushed her uniform. "I mean it, _sardzhent_. Figure it out." She raised a hand and wiggled her fingers over her shoulder in a wave as she sauntered off. "See you in a couple hours, Alina. And Fedyor, say hi to your mom for me, will you?"  


* * *

The tension in the car was palpable. Ana tapped the steering wheel with her switchblade incessantly while Zoya chipped at her nail polish. Harshaw shook his foot as he stared out the window, and Alina slapped her phone against her palm. 

Davna sighed loudly and looked up from her laptop, where her nails clicking against the keyboard had been the only non-anxious sound in the vehicle. "It's going to work. And even if it doesn't." She shrugged.

"Easy for you to say," Zoya snorted, then cast a glance at Alina. They both envied Davna's lack of attachment.

Alina had ditched Fedyor again that morning, leaving him standing guard outside the same empty room as before. She should make the most of this time without supervision, but there was no way she was able to focus on anything other than the results of this latest experiment. Which they would know in – 

She glanced at the clock on her phone. "We can start heading back." 

Ana had the car in gear before she'd finished the sentence, but she drove atypically slowly as they neared the clearing. This was the same one they'd used the month before, the tire tracks from their previous excursion frozen over and still visible in the snow. 

They opened the doors and began walking towards where the Shadow had been, breath shallow, almost as if an exhale too loud might disrupt the entire thing. _Superstition_. But.   


There was no need for Davna to sift through the sands this time – no need to sift through sands at all. The clearing was just as they had left it – a black not-quite-opaque film cube surrounded by snow – with one major change. 

A layer of grey sand in the bottom of the cube where the Shadow had once been.

It had worked. Alina let out a little shout and Harshaw gave her a huge hug, lifting her slightly in the process. Zoya, far too dignified for anything like, rolled her eyes and tried her best to hide a smile. 

This thing could work. Now they just had to figure out the right way to introduce it to everyone.

The phone in Alina's pocket rang and she pulled it out, frowned at the screen.

"Who is it?" Ana asked.

Alina's frown deepened. She took a deep breath, removed her glove, and swiped to answer the call. The phone was cold against her ear, and she kept her tone deliberately light in her best impersonation of being pleasantly surprised to receive a mid-day call from her spouse. "Hi, sweetie. What's going on?"

The voice on the other end was ice. "Where are you." 

_So much for that_. She rubbed the toe of her boot in a semicircle in the snow in front of her. "You got through to my phone, so I'm guessing you already know."   


"Get back here. Now." 

She had been glad when the danger had returned to her husband's eyes, and the relief she had felt at seeing him pulled from the depths of despair hadn't been wholly selfish on her part. At the moment, though, she would have settled for a less frightening partner. Four pairs of eyes looked at her expectantly and she gave them a half-smile, faking a reassurance that fooled no one. She shoved as much innocence into her voice as she could muster. "Is something the matter?" 

"Alina." It sounded like a threat, like the potential undoing of everything she had worked towards. 

_Shit shit shit shit shit_. She pointed to the car and followed as the group nervously made their way there, not stopping to collect the film container from the clearing. "I don't think –"  


"Tell Ana I expect you at the government building in ninety minutes." 

"We're a little far away for that."

"Sixty minutes. And, Alina." She didn't reply, held the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she fastened her seatbelt. He exhaled and it was half-groan, half-growl. "You have a lot of explaining to do."

* * *

Ana had compressed the drive into a terrifying forty-five minutes; Alina thought she might pass out from the sheer terror of mountain roads at that speed but was grateful for the distraction it provided. Zoya glared at her the entire car ride and everyone was silent, giving Alina time to think. She replayed the conversation over and over, examined his tone. By the time the car pulled up in front of the building, she had come up with a plan.

She walked into the meeting room, head held high, and all eyes in the room turned towards her. The look from the general was about as she'd expected – face frighteningly impassive in the presence of the large American delegation. The Secretary had almost an amused look on her face and Grace was – well, Alina would have felt somewhat bad for Grace except that she was caught short by –

"Nikolai? I thought you were in Subkin." 

His smile looked like it was causing him physical pain. "We got back early. There were some issues with the installation and we decided it wasn't worth spending the weekend with those unresolved. When we got back we needed to find you. And, um. Zoya." 

Mal stood behind Nikolai, head bent so that his hair fell slightly into his face, fascinated by the lines of his hands. 

"We asked Fedyor to get you and when he realized you were gone, we –" 

"I panicked." This was Mal. He cleared his throat, looked up. Whatever pain this had caused Nikolai was doubled in Mal's eyes. "I started going through your cabinets to see where you might have gone. I'm sorry. I panicked."

Her smile got tighter. "You panicked your way into my _locked_ personal belongings?"   


"We were worried about you," Nikolai cut in, his gaze looking between the two of them, hoping to avoid a scene. 

Of course they were. Alina wondered if she'd trusted the two of them too much, trusted that they would work for what her interests actually were rather than whatever they perceived them to be. 

"I'm fine, clearly," she said finally, taking her seat at the table without waiting for the Americans who had stood at her arrival to sit. The general's hand clenched the end of his armrest and she laid her fingers on top of his. "We'd wanted to wait until we had something conclusive to show, but it sounds like the surprise has been ruined." She didn't glance towards Mal when she said it, but she saw him cringe all the same. 

"When it comes to weapons of mass destruction," Grace said slowly, as if she were speaking to an exceptionally dull child, "surprises aren't something we usually hope for." 

"Aren't you glad you got one you can be happy about, then?" Alina asked, leaning back in her chair. Her toes curled tightly in her shoes, but she made sure none of the tension was visible on her face. "I would have thought you'd be thrilled to learn that we have found a material that can withstand and stop the effects of the Shadow." 

The silence in the room was a living thing, straining against its boundaries, uninterrupted by breath. "Is that what you have?" The Secretary's dry amusement was gone, her tone severe, warning herself against hope. 

_They wanted this_. Alina crossed one leg over the other before answering. "It is. And the test we did today," she cast a glance at Nikolai and at Mal, "was the confirmation we were waiting for. We created a sealed container of the material, and the effects of the Shadow were completely contained."   


Three breaths. Grace broke first. "How much of this can you make?"

"Enough," Alina equivocated. 

"Enough to protect other countries?" 

She blinked, then laughed. "No, not enough to protect other countries. you'd have to –" she circumscribed a dome with her hands, "–cover the entire nation. Which I suppose you could do but I hardly think it would be worth the cost. This is more of a … think of it like a lead suit to protect against radiation. If you want a more technical description," she could see they didn't but she didn't particularly care, "it's a photon _re_ combiner. The way the Shadow uses photons to begin to rip apart atoms, this," she held her hands wide then pushed them together so they were touching, "constrains the photons again. Makes them behave normally, and they can pass through as light rather than destruction."  


There was more silence that she didn't feel the need to fill. Alina traced the tip of her ring finger across the back of her husband's hand, testing the waters. He didn't respond. 

The secretary cocked her head. "I appreciate that it was speculative, but given that it can't be deployed on a large scale, what were you hoping to achieve?" 

Alina shrugged. "More secure storage, a material that we could make hazmat suits out of. It will be useful for future study."

Secretary Lantsov nodded slowly. "And to test these, you … ?"

The tricky part. "We've created Shadows with radii small enough to not cause large amounts of destruction. A lot of Ravka is uninhabitable."

Her smile was thin. "You've been setting off Shadows while we were in the country." 

_If you want to put it that way._ "We weren't worried," Alina replied.  


The secretary's smile stretched even further. "I imagine you weren't." There was a break in the conversation as everyone thought. Alina drew her finger across the general's hand again, and this time he moved quickly, catching her fingertip between the pad of his thumb and the side of his index finger. She read the pressure carefully. _Good_.  


Secretary Lantsov stood. "Well, of course this changes things," she said, smoothing her unwrinkled pantsuit. "We'll have to consult, but if there is a way to mitigate or nullify the effects of the Shadow, even on a small scale, that's something we'll want to make sure is addressed sooner rather than later." She fixed Alina with a stare that she couldn't quite read. "I'll see what my commander in chief has to say." 

Once the American delegation filed out, Minister Zhuralev turned towards the _Soveren_ Morozova.  


"We'll discuss later." 

This was the first time the general had spoken since Alina had entered the room, and she saw the blink of Anastasia's eyes as she ran through whether or not the dismissal was due to anything on her part. He motioned with his hand and she nodded, apparently convinced and relieved that it wasn't. The minister followed the few guards (no Fedyor, Alina noticed) out of the room. 

The door closed behind them, and the entire force of that gaze was on her. 

"Explain."

Alina cocked her head. "Where's Fedyor?" 

"Fedyor later. Right now you will explain." 

His jaw twitched and she bit the inside of her cheek. This was a gamble but ... She held up both hands. "I get that you're angry," she said. "This caught you by surprise." 

"You used a division of the Ravkan military on an unsanctioned research project that I found out about from the Americans. I would say," he enunciated, slowly, "that counts as a surprise." 

"It's the finding out from the Americans that bothers you." 

"Among other things." 

She refused to back down in the face of the heat of the anger in his eyes; her lips quirked to one side. "But you're not _just_ upset. I'm willing to bet, in fact, that you're as excited about this as I am."   


"And why would that be."

"Because you've already figured out what this means." His expression didn't change, which she thought was promising. When he didn't reply she stood and slid onto his lap. His eyes were still hard but his features had already smoothed out, which was good news for her. She tucked her legs, propping one knee then the other next to his hips. He let her. _Good_. "It means," she ducked her head so she was eye level with him, "that during development, testing, and storage, we have a way to guarantee Ravkan safety against the Shadow."   


His expression shifted to a practiced unreadability. "A way that you may have just given to the Americans."

"That was unfortunate," she acknowledged. "But I'll handle them. And we're not going to use it against them, anyway."

"Fjerda could get it."

"And then what? They really can't protect their whole country. But _we_ can use it. This was the piece you were missing this whole time." She touched her forehead to his. "We can control the uncontrollable."   


His exhale was long. "You should have told me." 

"Should I?" 

"Alina," this time it was half-growl, half-plea. She had been right, then.

She did her best to look appropriately chastised. "I won't do it again." It was a promise worded vaguely enough that she could probably never break it even if she tried, and the slit of his eyes said he was well aware of that. But he also wanted to believe her. She didn't let herself smile at the realization.

There were a few breaths of tense silence before he spoke again. "I trusted that you would do the right thing."

"This was not a violation of that trust," she argued.

"Not quite," agreed the general. "But over the past couple hours, I've come to the conclusion that you don't seem to feel our incentives are sufficiently aligned." He ran a hand down her back. "Are you familiar with Tengjiang?" 

She blinked at the change of topic. "The town in Shu Han near the Ravkan border?"

He nodded. "Do you know how many people live there?"

Her head tilted side to side slightly. "A couple thousand."

"If you use my military without my authorization again, I will see that that number becomes zero."

Her skin turned cold. "Ah," she breathed.

"Ah," repeated the general. He placed both hands on either side of her face, looked in her eyes. "Fedyor's job is to protect you; failure to do so under circumstances that could be considered neglect is punishable by death." She instinctively jerked away but he held her face close to his. His voice was low, serious. "He has been reprimanded but he will survive this lapse. But if you leave without Fedyor again, Alina, I will kill him myself." His eyes focused first on her right, then her left. "Am I understood?"

She swallowed, weighing the tradeoffs. She'd have to be more careful, but it was clear he now thought he knew the worst of what she was hiding from him; as long as she didn't disabuse him of that notion, that would be to her advantage. She dipped her head. " _Da, Soverenyi_." 

He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again, the grey a storm now rather than steel, more hunger than anger. "Now tell me. Everything."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter twenty!! So excited to get there :)
> 
> Thank you all for reading and especially everyone who's left encouragement so far – I really really appreciate it <3


	21. Chapter 21

So much of the time since their wedding had felt suspended to Alina, a held breath. She was waiting for information, waiting for installations to be set up, waiting to put the pieces of her plan into motion. She had waited during the frozen month of Baghra's death, walked the hallways of their house as the days and evenings blurred into an indistinguishable haze. Her husband was a patient man, but she felt the static motion of time gnawing into her, feeding the fire in the pit of her stomach.

When time finally began moving again, it went so fast it made her head spin. 

The day after she’d told her husband about the material that could protect against the Shadow, Alina had gone through and mitigated the personnel damages that had come with the discovery. She'd apologized to Fedyor but been cut short by a formal bow. "My life is my country's, _Soverenyi_ ," he'd replied. When he straightened again, he held her gaze without flinching. "However you decide to spend it."  


Her visit to the American's hotel had gone only a little better; a contrite Mal had stood in the corner as Nikolai had pressed Alina for information under the guise of apology. After several unfruitful minutes and an uncomfortable silence, he gave up.

"When I met you at university, Alina, I thought you were the most brilliant person I knew." Nikolai examined her evenly, though she could see something working behind his eyes. "Now I think I’ve underestimated you, even so." 

Part of her still cared – still cared a lot – what the two of them thought of her. But that wasn’t a part of herself she could indulge right now. "I need you to trust me if you’re going to stay here," she'd replied.

Narrowed eyes. "Is that a threat?"

"It’s not. I want you here." This was true. She needed them to stay, was counting on it. "But I need to be able to trust that you trust me. You need to let me do what I need to – without interference – or you need to leave."

Quietly: "And what is it you're doing, Alina?" 

They looked at each other, jaws set. She tilted her chin up, aware that in the end Nikolai would agree to whatever she demanded. "Let me do what I need to and you'll find out soon enough." She felt only a twinge of guilt at the deep sigh this elicited. 

And now, that same evening, the general informed her that the intelligence units had located the people who had perpetuated the massacre at Dva Stolba.

Not all of them, to be sure – some of them were already dead, according to the report, and Alina didn’t waste any tears on them. Some of them had left the military and now led unexciting careers in various cities around Fjerda. But the rest of them … 

"They’re concentrated in three units," she read aloud. Two were infantry units, which was what she expected, but one of them was special forces. 

The general nodded. "Stationed all across the country."

The special forces division was near the northern border. Her stomach burned. "It will be too difficult to get to them that close to Tsiberia," Alina pondered. "But …" An idea flickered. The general waited, expectant. 

There were times when she questioned herself, watched herself from the outside, certain that this would be the step at which she faltered. There were still times she had doubts.

Now was not one of those times.

The movement in the corner of her vision didn’t distract her as she looked back at her husband and gave an imitation of his smile, the death and promises hard on her lips. "We make them come to us."

* * *

Alina slept until almost seven on Monday, and when she woke, it was spring. Not spring like it would have been in her university back in America, a Ravkan spring – the snow was beginning to melt, the hard, thin covering of ice turning to slush as the sun rose.

For the first weekday in months there was no reason to be in the lab ridiculously early, and she took her time showering, drank her coffee in the kitchen before heading in to work. Her email had contained a calendar invitation from her husband for an event tonight and she knew what that meant, but there were things to finish in the lab first. Fedyor stepped through the slush with her in silence, light blinding off of the snow, cold pricking at both of their noses. 

By the time she got to the lab, the division was already deep in discussion on next steps. Alina had emailed Zoya the night before to let her know they’d gotten authorization to begin ramping up production; the priorities were protecting the rooms that the Shadows were stored in and creating hazmat-like suits that would allow for safer iteration and development in the future. There were a few technical challenges with that – anything that wasn’t made of this material would be destroyed by the Shadow, so the outside of the entire suit had to be exclusively made of the film. Additionally, the interactions of the film with the photons made it impossible to see through, and any clear visor would be devoured if the Shadow was deployed, along with the person in the suit. And if you were walking through an active Shadow in that suit, there wouldn’t be anything to _see_ , anyway – the photons were all in the business of destruction and couldn’t be bothered to actually light anything up for you.  


One of the many problems with dark bombs, it turns out. 

Ana had begun thinking about how this could be incorporated into the secure storage facilities, and Zoya and Harshaw were working with the rest of the division that was present on ideas for protective suits. It was this discussion that Alina slipped into the back of. 

"Flexibility is a problem," Harshaw was explaining. "Right now this can bend sufficiently well to enable the range of movement that we’d need for walking, but nothing that would be sufficient for a glove."

"We could make joints," Zoya pointed out.

"We could," Davna agreed. "Though we'll need them to slide against each other in a way that won't let stray photons through."

"Too hard to figure out?" Zoya teased, more relaxed than Alina had seen her in a long while. She was more confident now that the general had given this project his blessing – and funding. 

"Not for me," Davna replied, nearly affronted, having missed Zoya's tone.

"One of the other big issues is that there’s no way to see through this. And even if there was, if the Shadow is detonated the photons won't be working sufficiently normally to allow anyone to see, and any sensors we put on the outside of the suit would be crumpled by the bomb. So we need something that can get signal from the outside, but do all of the monitoring from the inside of the suit." 

"And heat mapping won’t work," Eva said, pensively. "Since we’d be stripping away that information from the photon layer by the time it got through the suit." 

"What about sound?" Zoya turned in her seat to look at Alina. "Sound will just make ripples in the surrounding atoms and cause vibrations – those will get carried through the suit so we can access them from the inside. We already have some echolocation systems built for other purposes." 

Alina nodded; it was a good idea. "How long would it take you to repurpose them?"

Zoya shrugged. "For an initial trial? Let's say a few weeks." 

"So we'll do that," Alina said. "Davna, you work on the gloves and a rough assembly of a hazmat suit equivalent. Harshaw and Zoya, figure out the sound vision, bring in Marie if you need to." Marie had been doing better, slowly healing. She still followed Nadia but Alina got the sense that the switch from Nadia being the third wheel to it being Marie wasn't going to be good for her in the long run. "Ana, take Eva and Alexei to do tests for sound waves when a Shadow's detonated so they can calibrate the systems. And," she glanced at the two of them, then at Ana, "keep a close eye on them for me."

The twins looked at each other, small smiles beginning. "I don't know what she's talking about. Do you?" 

Alexei had a broad grin now. “I haven't the slightest clue.”

Harshaw's eyes widened as he realized what this meant. "No," he begged. "Don't. Please." 

There was a boom, and at the other end of the lab one half of a workstation disappeared. A light settling of particleboard covered the area and Harshaw jumped before squeezing his eyes shut, tilting back his head, and letting out a deep sigh.

Eva turned to Alina. "I’m going to need a new desk," she reported.

"Yeah," Alina sighed rubbing her forehead. She suddenly needed more coffee. "Okay."

* * *

That night, Alina looked in the mirror and adjusted the neckline of her dress, one last check before she was ready to leave. The diamonds from the ring on her finger reflected light into the mirror, blinding her temporarily. 

She’d put on the ring once Genya had finished with her makeup, and her friend had raised her eyebrows. "That's new." 

"Kind of," Alina equivocated. She had done enough research on her own to reassure herself that the ring really had been stolen from Fjerda a couple decades prior, had read a number of the theories about the theft online. But it had been taken long enough ago that she hadn't been sure how recognizable it still was.

Genya had furrowed her brow for a couple seconds before she inhaled sharply, mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide. " _Shit_ , Alina, I didn’t know you had _Zwarte Ijs_. Hell, I didn’t know _Ravka_ had _zwarte Ijs_." She had lifted Alina’s hand so she could examine the ring better. "I always thought it had been an inside job. It was a little too convenient to blame the heist on Ravka. Although, apparently, correct." After several more seconds scrutinizing the jewels she’d let Alina’s hands drop, clenched her fingers around her friend’s upper arms, looked directly into her eyes. "Are you sure about wearing that ring tonight?”  


This was a question that didn’t require a lie. "Completely." 

She had been motionless for a few seconds, looked like she would say something else. But then she’d just shaken her head and embraced her friend. "Be careful, Alina. And good luck."

Now the general entered the room. "Are you ready?" 

She turned in the mirror, side to side, examining herself. If she was going to do this, she would do it in style; she wasn't going to let the general be the only one who could look good while starting a war. "Did you look at the plans I left for you?" This was their last chance to prepare the military before Fjerda would be forced to make a move. She’d debated several different tactics, but in the end she knew the one she had chosen was the best option they had.

"I did."

"And?" 

"It’s risky."

She met his gaze in the mirror and set her mouth firmly. "Before you ask, yes, I do know their names." He waited, eyebrows raised a hair, apparently not content with that reassurance. She exhaled. "Bogdan Semenov, Oksana Orlova, Arsney Lebedev. Led by _Meydzhor_ Vasiliev." He opened his mouth and she continued over him. "Bodgan has a little sister, Nika, and Oksana has three dogs. I know their names too, if you care.”   


A corner of his lips twitched upward, as much approval as she’d hoped to get from him. She turned back to her own reflection. “But it doesn’t make them less likely to die if I know who they are. Aside from which, just a few months ago you murdered hundreds of Ravkan _divizioniki_ – I would be shocked if you knew each of their names.”  


A sadder smile now. "I’m glad to know that I can still surprise you." 

She gave him a disbelieving look. "All of them, really?" 

"I worked with many of them over the last decade and a half. In those first five years I probably even had conversations with most of them." There was a pause. "Everything I’ve done I’ve done for this country, to ensure its safety. Any plan that puts Ravkan lives at risk carries a cost."

She met his gaze. "And how many lives have you spent over the years?"

He returned it, evenly. "Fewer than I've saved."

The silence between them was thick, heavy. Would she be able to say the same, in the end? And would that be enough? 

She broke eye contact to look at herself in the mirror again, smoothing the dark skirt over her thighs. ”It’s been bothering me," she commented carefully. "The people who massacred my family and then retired from the military. We can get revenge on the people who are still serving, but the ones who aren't aren't any less guilty. Do they just get to carry on with their lives?"

"It is harder," her husband acknowledged, "but we have options.”

She looked at her profile in the mirror. “What sort of options?”

“We could bomb their houses, for one." 

Alina’s eyes widened and she looked back at him. "They have _children_. I’m not going to kill their children."  


The general gestured as if to say it was unimportant to him either way. 

She shook her head and indicated the back of her dress. "Help me with this clasp."

He pushed off the wall and took the clasp in his fingers, hooking it easily, before resting his hands on her shoulders and meeting her gaze in the mirror. "We agreed that you can command this war, and the decision is yours. But I would be careful about leaving children while killing their parents. Children who survive grow up to be adults who seek revenge." 

Her pulse sped perceptibly, and she wet the corner of her lip with her tongue. "Like me," she whispered. 

"Like you," he agreed, tucking a stray strand of hair into the folds of her head wrap. His eyes dipped again to the reflection of her ring in the mirror, and his mouth set firmly. "Like us."

* * *

The car pulled up to a building Alina didn’t recognize and her husband exited first, extending a hand to help her onto the sidewalk. He kept her hand in his, large palm engulfing her fingers and the ring both as they walked up the staircase to the entrance. His thumb lightly stroked the back of her hand.

When they came to the large double doors he stopped and turned towards her, the anger behind his eyes bright and hard but overlaid with something softer. She held her breath, waiting for whatever admonishment he felt was appropriate for the occasion, but after a moment he simply nodded, prompting Ivan to open the doors. 

The room was full of men and women with the look of politicians and dignitaries, though Alina recognized only a third of them – some ambassadors looked to be mixed in with the Ravkan political crowd. She shook hands with the ones she knew, and her husband introduced her to the ones she didn’t. 

A blond-haired man with his right arm in a sling approached; based on the way he held himself Alina guessed he'd recently dislocated his shoulder. "Ambassador Visser," the general said in Ravkan. "Have you met my wife?" 

The Fjerdan ambassador looked at Alina a moment, eyes hard, before giving a nod in absence of being able to move his arm. "A pleasure," he said in English. She wondered if a politician had ever said that phrase and meant it.

She took in the lines of his face, the harsh of his skin that looked like it had spent its fair share of time in the ice and wind. She hadn't had the opportunity to study many Fjerdans before and she looked carefully at this one, his face pale, his irises a blue so light it was almost grey, a tension in his features that showed exactly how close to war their two countries were. 

They'd be even closer in a moment. A server came by and the general took two glasses of champagne, handing one to Alina, who took it in her left hand and lifted it to her lips. 

The ambassador's gaze dropped to her ring, and she watched him carefully. Fjerdan pride was infamous, and as she paraded a stolen treasure in front of him, she saw his expression change, saw him realize that now they were in the last few moments before he would report back to the Fjerdan court, the last few moments before his country would retaliate, the last few moments before they were officially at war.

She could have tried to convince herself that the sensation in her veins was nerves, that it was a semblance of fear or guilt that shot through her at that moment. She might have been able to talk herself into believing any of those things ... except for the fact that when the ambassador brought his gaze from _Zwarte Ijs_ back up to her eyes, his face cold and jaw tight in frightening resemblance to the man next to her, she couldn’t stop the smile that came to her lips.   


Someone else came at that moment to speak with the ambassador, and as quickly as that, it was done. Tomorrow, she knew, Fjerda would make a move that would enable Ravka to fight back openly. But tonight, nothing had changed. The general took Alina by the hand and led her to the dance floor where he positioned them neatly into a waltz, began moving them in time with the music. She rested her left hand against his arm, conscious of the weight of the ring on her fingers, and pressed her cheek into his chest. 

She closed her eyes and kept them closed, letting the warmth of the general’s body and movement of their legs carry her through song after song. Her body had relaxed, her heart slowed to the beat of his by the time she looked at the crowd again. The ambassador was in the corner talking with a number of politicians she didn’t recognize, though even from this distance it was clear that he would rather be nearly anywhere else. 

Even so, a slight trill of panic seized her. “Shouldn’t he have gone back to call the Fjerdan court? Why is he still here?” She arched her back slightly to look up at the general. His head was tilted towards her, and she wondered if he’d been watching the top of her head with that same expression for the last half hour.

"The Russians are hosting this event. He wouldn’t risk offending them by leaving early.”

She glanced around at the room that was beginning to clear out. "Why? A bunch of other people have."

"This," he said slowly, "was hosted in honor of Ambassador Visser’s birthday." 

She blinked, then shook her head. "You deliberately ruined his birthday." He nodded in acknowledgement before he leaned down and kissed her, gently. 

"You’re terrible," she said against his lips.

He laughed softly into her mouth. "So," he murmured, "are you."

* * *

She had been waiting for months that felt like a lifetime, and she’d spent the last few days planning for this almost exclusively. But when the attack came, it still took her breath away. The beauty, the terror. 

The beginning. 

She and the general had spent hours speculating over what Fjerda’s first move would be. Despite the constraints on Fjerda – their ability to retaliate, relations in the area, weaponry – there were dozens of possibilities, although based on the messages that they had received from the Fjerdan court Alina was pretty sure that at this point the Fjerdans would have preferred to simply kill the two of them. She’d mentioned this to Genya to get a sense of how likely she thought an assassination attempt would actually be, but Genya had just shrugged it off. "I’m sure they’d like to, but they would have already done it if they were positioned to execute on it." Genya winked and Alina groaned; she would never get used to assassin humor.

Jokes aside, the fact that the forests were on fire seemed to indicate that Genya was right. 

Fjerda had chosen burning the north to register their displeasure, and as the spring winds blew down from the mountains the skies above Os Alta grew thick with smoke. The military firefighting units had been deployed and were working to maintain order, but the arson had been good and pervasive along the border. They’d had to evacuate several military bases and a couple villages, including one with an energy installation which had really pissed Alina off. 

Fjerda following the fires with a formal declaration of war had almost felt like a relief.

She’d heard the general’s side of the call with a furious Secretary Lantsov; the Americans knew that the _Soveren_ Morozova had done something to provoke Fjerda, but the Fjerdans with their damnable pride weren’t about to admit what it was. _And thus_ , she thought, the Americans, Ravkans, and Fjerdans each played their part, the dangerous melody unfolding measure by measure. People were predictable, Alina was coming to realize, and countries even more so. War was just a slow waltz; if you knew what you were doing, your parter might not even realize that you'd been leading the dance the whole time.  


She looked out the window of their bedroom, squinting up at the thick haze that dimmed the stars above the city. The weather was starting to thaw but people were still using the underground tunnels, now to avoid inhaling the smoke rather than the cold. She pressed her hand to the glass, feeling the chill from the outside, enjoying the small shiver it sent through her. 

She rubbed her thumb along the scar on her palm, let her breath fog the window in front of her. This was the first move in a war – the next step was hers to make. The heat in her stomach began to spread, licking at her ribcage. She inhaled deeply, turning away from the view of the smoke and heading towards the tunnels, from there to the lab. 

Her country was burning. A different sort of fire threatened to consume her, as well.

* * *

A couple weeks later, the air finally clean again after the burning in the north, a Ravkan-only crowd gathered in a clearing well outside of Os Alta. Alina stood next to her husband in the melting snow and the twenty-odd other people stood around them in a semi-circle, far away from the bomb. 

Ana handed the small black box to Alina. "If you'll do the honors, _Soverenyi_ , _Soverenyi_."  


Alina punched in her passcode and handed it to her husband, who entered his own, and the device beeped in confirmation. All attention was on the bomb in the distance and the crowd was silent; in that context, the buzz of a text message on Alina's phone felt almost painfully loud. No one else seemed to notice. 

This was the first time anyone still living had watched the Shadow detonate from close up, and Alina stared, transfixed, at the tendrils of darkness snaking their way out of the device, expanding, consuming. Half the crowd took a step backwards, but Alina's division and the general stood where they were, well outside of the radius of the explosion. 

The swirling black mass expanded, collapsed slightly, expanded again. A series of crunches came from behind them and Davna walked towards the blast radius, putting on her helmet as she neared. Alina held her breath as Davna continued walking in and was swallowed by the explosion.

The bomb itself was silent, and the dripping of water from branches in the distance was the only sound in the clearing. After several minutes, the mass started to dissipate, the black fading into wisps. As they cleared, the only thing that remained in the grey sands was Davna, fully suited, attempting to examine the perimeter of the blast area using the echolocation in the suit. They had so far only been able to project the equivalent of an eye slit's worth of data on the inside of the helmet, so Davna swung her head wildly from side to side as to get a full sense of the area.

Alina bit her lip to stifle a smile. They could outfit their soldiers to survive detonation of the Shadow. Her heart leapt, and for the first time since the wedding she let herself feel – beneath the dark, burning need for revenge – a small glimmer of hope. Selfish, perhaps, but she felt it all the same. Next to her, she could hear the general let out a long breath; she wondered just how long he'd been waiting for this and if he had any idea what it really meant. 

She fingered the phone in her coat pocket as it vibrated again, reminding her that she hadn't yet read the text. She looked up at her husband, who looked back at her, and smiled.

* * *

The night was deep and darkness curled through Alina’s senses as she lay staring up at the ceiling, the general beside her. He trailed the fingers of one hand along her side and watched her, carefully. The pulse in her neck decelerated, slowed. Became normal. 

"My presence is demanded in Kribinks tomorrow."

She forced a laugh. "Just as the war is getting started?" 

"I can issue orders from anywhere." His fingertips worked up her body again, this time between her breasts. "I’ll probably need to stay for a couple weeks."

She hummed in surprise. "A couple weeks is a long time." Long enough, she hoped.

"You could come with me." 

It wasn’t a command, quite. She glanced his way, caught the moonlight from the window reflecting off his eye. She kept her tone light. "I’m not coming with you." 

"I don’t want to leave you alone here."

She didn't know what his concern was, so she went with the obvious one. "I’ll be fine. The war’s on the border, not in Os Alta. You'll be in much more danger than me." 

There was a long pause, then his fingers began to repeat their downward trail. He released a breath, apparently deciding not to argue. "I’ll have Genya stay here while I’m away." 

A smile tugged at her lips as she thought back to a conversation before their wedding. "Not going to tell me to stay out of trouble this time?"

"It’s a little late for that."

Something flickered in her vision for the tenth time that day. She ignored it. Her body ached for sleep, but she was aware of her husband’s attention, the stillness in his body despite his fingers tracing on her skin.  

She waited a few minutes before speaking. "What do you want, Aleksander?"

She hadn’t really expected a reply, and for a while she thought his hand coming to rest on her hip might be the only response she got. But the stillness continued and she could hear the tension in his breath when he finally said: "More."

She exhaled a laugh without opening her eyes; he was usually less circumspect when it came to sex. "Is that dictator for 'again'?" 

"No." It was the waver in his voice that got her attention. She opened her eyes and turned, propping herself on an elbow to look at him. In the dim shadows she could see his expression was open, uncertain. There was something on his face that she wasn’t familiar with – resentment, maybe. Confusion?

"More what?" He didn’t answer, and she felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach as he watched her with that same unnamed mix of emotions. "More than Ravka?" She waited, grew impatient. "More what?" 

"More ..." He inhaled. "More than this." 

He spread his hand in indication – _this_. More than a marriage for the sake of politics, more than a physical intimacy taking the place of any other kind. More than an understanding built of desperation and war and revenge.  


She looked at him, a dull ache in her chest. Part of herself pulled towards him at the same time she pulled away, as afraid to be with him as without.

This was dangerous enough as it was. _More_ would be ...  


The tug of his gaze was a nearly physical pain. She leaned towards him and pressed her lips lightly against his before pulling back and resting a hand on his cheek; she traced the scars across the bridge of his nose, invisible in the dark, and felt his skin under her fingertips, human and alive. 

"You don't deserve more, Aleksander," she whispered. His eyes widened slightly in response, but he was otherwise still. When she finally withdrew her hand, she lowered herself to the mattress, settled herself against the angles of his body. His chest brushed her shoulder with each breath, silent in the shadows. "Neither of us does."

* * *

Alina hadn’t expected Genya to greet her when she arrived home the next day. "You’re here." 

"As promised," her friend replied. "Didn’t the general tell you I would be?" 

The conversation the night before seemed impossibly long ago. "I think so."

One eyebrow lifted. "You _think_."  


"Why didn’t he take you?" 

Genya shrugged, an almost impossibly elegant gesture as she led Alina into the dining room. "For the same reason he didn’t take you, I imagine." 

"You wouldn’t go?" 

The look on Genya’s face said a lot. "Perhaps not for the same reason, then." 

Genya kept up a lively conversation as they ate – or, more accurately, she kept up a lively conversation as she ate. Alina pushed some food around on her plate and drank coffee. 

"Why are you so quiet?" Genya asked when she put down her fork and knife.

Alina wasn’t sure what answer to give. She was thinking – she spent so much of her time thinking these days – but that wasn’t it. Something else had been bothering her.

"What do you want?" she asked her friend, before realizing that in context it came across as rude. "I don’t mean it like that. What do you want, in life?" 

"To grow old," Genya replied, simply and without hesitation.

Alina blinked. Out of all the possible responses, that wasn’t one she had expected. "That’s all?" 

Genya smiled with a corner of her lips, and in that expression Alina saw the deep fatigue beneath her upbeat mask. "That’s not all," she acknowledged, "but that’s enough."

* * *

  Alina lay in bed staring at the ceiling, brain jumping from one thought to another. There was an intrusion, some shadow of her parents maybe, then there was a flicker in the corner of her eye and then –

The alarm on her phone buzzed against the mattress, and she jolted awake. It was dark, deep night, and other than the guards outside she would be the only one awake – a fact she'd been counting on. She waited a couple minutes until her breathing evened out. She put her palms on her cheeks to warm her face when she started shivering; her hands came away wet. 

She picked up a corner of the comforter and wiped her eyes. There had been something in her dreams that she would have thought back on if she'd had more time, but she wouldn't have many nights to herself. She grabbed her phone from the bedside table and used it to light her way as she walked down the stairs, silent.

* * *

Alina looked over the maps, exhausted. She'd gotten little sleep in the week and a half her husband had been gone – there was so much to do. She tried to focus, tried to sound better than she felt.

"I think we’re forgetting about Fryavda." She spoke into her phone, pressing it between her ear and shoulder as she pulled out another map. "That’s an easy target and I don’t think Fjerda’s going to pass it by on their next round of attacks."

"If we order an evacuation, they’ll know." The general’s voice was as even and smooth as ever. He’d been in Kribinks for eleven days, but they had a standing evening call in addition to occasional discussions during the day. War progressed, no matter where they were. 

Alina blinked, willing her brain to begin working. "We can’t order an evacuation but we need to figure out how to repel them out of there. We need to force them more towards Kalkhovo valley."

"This is the second time you’ve said that," the general observed. "Explain." 

More maps shuffled around. "I want to draw the Fjerdan divisions into that valley. It’s in the right direction, it’s unpopulated, and it’s contained."

"And then what."

"I haven’t thought that far ahead. But once we have them where we want them … " 

There was silence from his end, which she took for agreement. She rubbed her face with her hand and glanced around. There should be coffee somewhere in the room, but she couldn’t see where she’d left it. She had brought some in, she was sure of it …

"Genya tells me you haven’t been eating."

The abrupt change in topic surprised her, and she blinked, distracted from her search for coffee. Hadn't she? She sifted through memories of the last few days. She thought she remembered eating something. Or trying to, anyway. Herring? There was always herring. 

"Maybe," she agreed finally.

"You need to eat."

"I’m aware of how biology works," she replied dryly, resuming the search for her coffee. 

"Alina."

"Is that an order?" She was only half paying attention to the banter, now very concerned as to where her coffee had gone.

"Would it get you to do it?" 

"Not unless you come back and make me." 

"Tempting." There was a pause. "There will always be war, Alina. I know you're impatient, but I've been planning for this for years; no matter what we do the war will go on for years more. We’ll come out of this ahead, but pace yourself. You don’t need to kill yourself to save Ravka." 

That caught her attention. "What if I did need to?" 

"What do you mean." 

"What if it does come down to Ravka or me? What then?"

"It won’t." His dismissal made her worry he was missing the point completely. She clutched the phone with both hands and stood, back pressed against the door she had been about to open to get more coffee.

"And if it does?" She could hear the desperation in her own voice, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. The answer to this was suddenly very important. 

There was silence before he answered, a thinking one. She exhaled quietly, not wanting to disturb it.

"If it does," he answered finally, "I imagine I’ll already be dead, too." 

* * *

Alina sat at the dinner table alone – the general was expected back within the hour and Genya had gone to prepare the government building (and employees) for his return. She looked at the attractively arrayed food in front of her and considered eating, but found she was too hopped up on caffeine to be hungry. Instead, she picked up her bag and wandered through the empty corridors of her house, taking the long way to her warroom. There were ideas she had about the next moves in the war with Fjerda, but they would be risky. She ignored a movement in the corner of her vision.

As she passed the door to the general’s office, she realized she should get out the keys for her own warroom. She unzipped the outer pocket of her bag and felt for them, fingers jittering slightly. In the process, she brushed something hard, metal. Something that had not been in her bag when she left for work that morning.

Her breath caught and she held it for a second. Just long enough to hear a _tick tick tick._

Alina had imagined her death countless times – the sharp crack of a bullet, the squeal of tires, the silence of the Shadow. In her more morbid moments of envisioning the multitude of ways that she could die, she had debated the relative merits of each. 

But she hadn't planned on dying like this. _Not_ like this.  


She dropped the bag in front of the door and sprinted back the way she came, diving around the corner of the hallway with almost no time to spare. 

She felt the explosion before she heard it, a wave of heat that crashed at her back and knocked her against the wall followed by a roar that threatened echoed in her ears after it had ended. She heard the rattled dying of a door, the sounds of a segment of their corridor crumbling, and she caught herself murmuring a prayer, though in her panic she had no idea to who or for what. 

The explosion ended as quickly as it had began. She heard one final crack before she opened her eyes and examined the hallway, now covered in powdered plaster. She pushed herself up from the floor and let out a weak cough, thankful for her ability to draw breath. The lights above her shuddered once, then died, the darkness sudden and complete. For a few moments, all she heard was her breath. 

And then, the sirens.

She collapsed back against the wall, and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU AGAIN to everyone who has left comments, I appreciate it so, so much.
> 
> And we're getting near the end! Chapter 24 is the epilogue, so that's really only two more chapters!! It's been getting more stressful to update so I put this one off for a bit but it's so close now ... I may try to crank these last bits out <3
> 
> Alsooo was glad I waited to update until after Crooked Kingdom - bonus points to anyone who catches the CK shout out!


	22. Chapter 22

The minutes after the bomb went off were lost in a blur of activity. Guards shouted, feet pounded down the hallway, hands dimly lit with beams from flashlights helped Alina up, wrapped her in a blanket, and deposited her in a room of the house she hadn't even known existed. The explosion had been smaller than it had felt – the door to the general's office and surrounding walls were demolished and the papers within were blown, but Alina's own warrroom next door was nearly untouched. The bomb had caused a minor amount of destruction to the building; it would have caused significantly more destruction to the human carrying the bag.

Once she was alone, Alina felt her sides carefully, tested the skin of her scalp with her fingertips. She was shaking, and probably not from the caffeine this time. She had accepted the warm coffee she'd been handed and now she breathed in slowly, pulling the blanket around her. There were no windows in whatever room this was and the sounds from outside were muffled as if from a distance; this was either a cell or a safe room and she was hoping for the latter. She sat on the floor in the dark, knees in front of her chest, and leaned her head back against the wall to wait once again, hot liquid shaking in her hands.

Twenty minutes later the door flew open, the stark figure of the general outlined in light – power had apparently been restored, and she cringed, blinking in the sudden brightness. A breath where he was backlit, stationary, and the next second he fell to his knees in front of her, his hands on either side of her face as he frantically checked her for visible wounds. Apparently satisfied that her head was in tact, he ripped off the blanket around her to begin examining the rest of her body, spilling the now-tepid coffee in the process. 

"I'm fine," Alina protested with a voice too hoarse to carry any weight. She grabbed at the blanket, trying to blot up the liquid where it had begun soaking into her clothing. 

"You were nearly blown up. You're not _fine_ ," he gritted through his teeth, brushing the blanket aside again as he continued examining her. He yanked open the front of her shirt, buttons careening to the side as he checked her skin, running his fingers over her sides and back, searching for injuries.

She smiled weakly. "You're back for ten seconds and already tearing my clothes off." 

His head snapped up, eyes wide. "This isn't a joke, Alina."

"You think you need to tell _me_ that?" She swallowed and surprised herself when she felt a drop fall onto her bare wrist. She closed her eyes and shook her head, wiping the tears with the heels of her palms.

When she opened her eyes, his expression had shifted. The blind panic that had seized him was replaced by a fear bordering on fury, and there was a moment where she worried. Then he pulled her in towards his chest, fingers gripping awkwardly at the sides of her arms. "I should have taken you with me." 

Even through his clothing, she could hear the furious racing of his heart. Her legs were drenched in coffee and her hands were still shaking but she pushed herself closer into the embrace. They sat like that for a few minutes, his grip desperately tight around her. The fact that it was uncomfortable was comforting in and of itself.

Finally she licked her lips. "How?"

"I don't know." She could feel the frustration of that sentence in the tension of his arms, feel the vibrations rumbling through his chest. "We're figuring it out. But you've been with Fedyor all day." 

It wasn't a question, but she nodded. "Just at the lab. We stopped at the library on the way home. I …" She swallowed. "I checked the bag there."  

He exhaled, nearly a growl, but didn't say anything more. When she had stopped shaking he released her and stood, holding out a hand. "Come. Bed." 

She took the hand and pulled herself up, realizing that her shirt was still open. She tried to close it, but given the missing buttons was unsuccessful. She sighed and looked at him. "I thought these clothes were supposed to be bulletproof, anyway."

"Shrapnel is different." He eyed her carefully for a moment, reassuring himself that she really was okay before he pulled off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

He led her upstairs in silence and put her in bed, handling her gently enough that she felt she might break. When she was tucked in to his satisfaction, he straightened to leave. 

"Don't go." If she was begging, she figured this was a night where that could be forgiven. "I ... I don't want to be alone." 

"You need sleep."

"I'm too ... " She raised a hand, the slight tremor visible, and he nodded. He would know about being unable to sleep, at least. 

A breath. "You know I should be coordinating the investigation into this." 

Her voice was a whisper. "Is that where you should be?"

He hesitated another moment before sitting on the bed beside her. He brushed hair back from her forehead with the tips of his fingers, kept his voice low.

"You think my being here will help." This time the lack of inflection sounded to her less like boredom and more like a deep exhaustion.

She inclined her chin slightly in a nod, tried to let herself relax. "Maybe you could take my mind off this."

He narrowed his eyes. "Alina."

"No, I mean." She shook her head. "Tell me something to distract me. Tell me a story." 

"I don't know any bedtime stories."

Curiosity played on her lips. "Baghra never told you any?" His hesitancy wasn't a deflection, so she pushed the advantage. "Tell me about that then."

"About not knowing any bedtime stories."

"About your mother. About you."

There were a few breaths before he spoke, and she worried that she'd pushed too far. 

"Where would I even start."

"The beginning," Alina suggested. In the silence, she took one of his hands in hers, no longer shaking, and entwined their fingers. "Tell me."

And he did.

* * *

The general was gone when she woke again. The clock by the bed suggested that it was five in the morning; they'd talked late enough that she could only have slept for a couple hours. She pushed herself out of bed, exhausted but determined, and quickly discovered that every part of her body ached. This was, perhaps, an aftereffect of nearly being exploded the night before.

She put on her uniform and tucked her hair beneath a hat, avoiding looking in the mirror she passed as she went downstairs in search of coffee. The kitchen was packed – the general, Ivan, Fedyor and Genya were around the center island along with Minister Zhuralev and two severe looking Majors she didn't recognize. There was a heated debate in Ravkan; Alina was too tired to focus on the words, but she had a good idea of what they'd be discussing.

At her footsteps, the conversation abruptly stopped and everyone turned towards her. "Alina!" Genya ran to her, put her arms around her friend. 

Alina hesitated for a moment, thinking back to a similar embrace in the cafeteria when she'd been worried about Genya, remembering how foolish she had been. Her face reddened a little, shame and guilt together, before she returned the hug. Her husband watched her evenly but she could see the tightness in his jaw, the way his gaze swept her whole body as verifying that she had, in fact, survived in one piece. "It's okay," Alina said into Genya's hair.

"It's _far_ from okay," the chief of staff said, pushing back from Alina. "We still don't know who's responsible." 

Alina opened her mouth, then closed it. Opened it again, realized everyone was still looking at her. She went through a few possible things she could say, but had the sense that it wasn't the right time for any of those things. Eventually she settled on: "Coffee?" 

That got enough of a laugh from the foreign minister and one of the majors – her husband even unclenched his jaw slightly – that Alina let herself smile when Fedyor handed her a cup. She pulled out the unoccupied stool and sipped from the mug while the conversation resumed. It was now in English, presumably for her benefit.

The debate seemed to be between whether Fjerda or Shu Han was responsible and the best way to find out. Minister Zhuralev came down firmly on the side of Fjerda for obvious reasons, but one of the majors was arguing for Shu Han. Everyone else was watching them talk, the general letting them argue and remaining silent. The other major watched them, too, until she interjected: "What about the Americans?" 

The room fell silent for a few breaths. "No."

Alina hadn't realized it was her who'd said it until everyone turned to look at her again. There was a flicker in the corner of her vision and she shook her head to clear it. "I mean, that wouldn't make sense. We've been working with them, and they're exited about the energy systems and the protection and it seems to be what they want …" Her voice trailed off. The arguments were weak, at best, but Alina wasn't going to have Nikolai and Mal put in danger over this.

"They've been furious ever since Fjerda made a declaration of war," the major pointed out.

Alina stared into her coffee mug as if she could disappear in it. "They haven't been furious with _me_."

The major softened her voice. "They don't have to be."

In the periphery of her vision she could see her husband looking at her levelly, and everyone turned back to him, waiting for a response. Several seconds passed before he stood. "Genya, rule out the Americans for us. _Meydzhor_ Balka, find out what you can on the borders of Shu Han and I want a report in six hours. Minister Zhuralev, stay away from the Fjerdans."

She frowned. "But, _Soverenyi_ –" 

"That's an order." She snapped her mouth shut, still frowning, but left with the two majors. Genya squeezed Alina's arm as she headed out of the room, leaving her alone with her husband and the two guards. He gestured for Ivan and Fedyor to wait in the hallway, and they brushed past her, Fedyor giving her what could have been a sympathetic glance.

She finished the coffee and indicated with her head the door where six or seven guards were now waiting. "Are you giving me more people for protection?" 

"No." He sat back on the stool, almost tired. "You're not leaving the house." 

"I almost get killed _inside_ this house and now I'm under house arrest?" 

"Don't be difficult." He rubbed a hand over his eyes and in that gesture she saw the toll this was taking on him. She wondered if he felt just as destroyed as she did. "I need to be able to focus on running this country and I can't do that if I'm worrying about whether or not you're still alive." 

"That sounds almost romantic."

He waved a hand. "You've passed off responsibility for the energy systems nearly completely, and you're only needed for consulting in the suit development. If you need to meet with the Americans, we can get you to the government building, and if your lab mates need you we have rooms you can use here."

"And you?"

"Me what."

"Are you staying with me?"

His gaze was unreadable. "Do you want me to."

She nodded slowly. He examined her face, and she wondered if he was second-guessing himself. But he replied softly, "Then I will."

She let the silence that followed be her gratitude. She went to get another cup of coffee, and as she poured she asked carefully: "Do you think it was the Americans?"

"I don't." He rested his hands on the counter. "But they're not being very … forthcoming." 

"How so?" 

"I would have expected them to have some information from Fjerda about this, but so far they've declined to share anything." 

Alina perched on a stool next to him, aware that her posture was terrible but too tired to do anything about it. "Maybe they're just trying to stand back while they let us get what we deserve. Let someone else take care of the problem." 

"We're not the villains in this story, Alina." 

"Oh, we are, Aleksander." She cocked her head at him, surprised. Her eyes searched his, tired but still attentive. Still watching her. "Don't you know that by now?"

* * *

Alina was more than busy enough without leaving the house – every move the Ravkans made had prompted Fjerdan retaliation, and over the course of the last few weeks things had escalated into a full on war. After the bomb had gone off, she spent the next few days and well into each night in her warroom, going over papers, poring over maps, reading the intelligence reports. There were deaths now – Ravkan deaths, military and civilian alike – and she counted them all, whispered the names aloud, each one like a punch to the gut. But she pushed forward and the war continued. She would not let their deaths be in vain.

Her husband spent his days focused on the country and his nights with her on the war; at her request he rarely left her side. She wanted to be there when he received any intelligence reports on who was behind the bomb. So far there had been little in the way of new information, but she needed to know what he knew when he knew it, and he was willing to oblige her. He took meetings with her present and as she worked she half-listened to the conversations he had about roads, about schools, about drinking water in the south. She became accustomed to the lopsided cadence of rebuilding a country in the background of their war. 

* * *

The first time she left her house after the explosion was four days later. Her husband had declined to allow Americans entrance to their home, so when Nadia and Nikolai asked to see her Alina was brought across the street for the meeting. Being smuggled to the government building felt more like an exercise in overkill than anything else: guards on either side of her in a car that took her from the doorway – now covered – and deposited her in a guarded basement parking garage. She'd thought about insisting on walking, but the look her husband gave her told her that it wouldn't be worth having that fight.

Nadia, Nikolai, Tamar, and Mal were waiting for her in a room, though she noticed that both of Nikolai's guards were now unarmed. Tamar fidgeted nervously and continually put her hands to her sides, clearly uncomfortable without her weapons. The four of them looked up when she entered the room, took in a collective breath.

Alina walked briskly to the table to get ahead of any questions. "You have updates on the energy system?" She lifted her chin, directing her question to Nadia.

Nikolai's mouth dropped open. "Alina, you look terrible."

"I look great," she snapped back. 

"You look _destroyed_." His shock was real enough that he wasn't even trying to make a joke.

"I was a few feet from a bomb that exploded last week," she retorted. "Forgive me for not being up to Lantsov preening standards." 

He looked like he was about to say something else, but Nadia cleared her throat and Alina turned pointedly towards her, ending the discussion. She was well aware of the fact that she looked like she hadn't slept in weeks; this was primarily due to the fact that for the most part she hadn't. She didn't feel the need to talk about it at length.

Nadia walked Alina through what had happened over the last few days. The systems they'd been setting up had been performing well – well enough that Alina was, honestly, thrilled. With the war ongoing she'd spent so little time recently thinking about the energy system; even just seeing it again made a part of her ache for the Alina that would have happily spent her life doing just this. Made her ache for the Alina that would ever have just been _happy_. 

"We think we can get systems installed in the next dozen villages before summer," Nadia was explaining. She pointed out the potential sites, all chosen for their viability and likelihood of not being targeted in the ongoing war. Alina was relieved to be bending over a map of the country where the markers indicated progress rather than destruction.

As the discussion continued, she leaned past Nikolai to get a report from the other side of the table and he reached towards her as she did, tugging gently at her scalp. 

"What's this?" he asked, examining the strands he held in his fingers.

She batted his hand away from her face and scowled at him. "My hair."

"It's _white_." 

"Yeah, well." She shoved the lock he'd pulled back up into the cap she wore, secured it around her ears. The grey hair she found a couple months ago had been the beginning of a cascade, her hair moving quickly from brown, to brown streaked with grey, to white streaked with brown. She'd initially watched in horror, but it was the least of her worries at this point and the one she could do the least about. She wore her hat inside her own home and avoided mirrors, and for the most part it didn't bother her anymore. "War is stressful. Anyway, my parents went grey early, too."

"Your parents?" This was Mal. 

She'd forgotten about that. The look on his face was one of shock, bordering on betrayal. Not knowing who they were or where they were from had been part of what had made them so similar as children, was part of their shared past. It was a connection that they'd always had. And now she'd taken that away.

She felt a twinge of guilt at having spoken without considering what it would mean to him, and a jolt of panic, as well – she would have to be more careful. 

"I found out a while ago," she admitted, voice lower, not quite apologetic. "I have photos. From before they ..." She made an ambiguous gesture and watched his face change from hurt to jealousy to anger. After a minute of struggle he got up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. 

She turned to her lab mate. "What else do you need from me, Nadia?" 

Nothing could change the fact that she knew who she was, now. She'd had to come to terms with that, and Mal would, too – or he wouldn't. It wouldn't change anything, really.

She didn't think so, anyway.

* * *

Alina was reading the intelligence reports for the fourth time that evening, ignoring everything her body was telling her about her posture and the length of time she'd been awake. 

"We've both read these several times already," her husband had pointed out the night before. "Are you just trying to savor it?"

She had rubbed both hands over her face. "I keep thinking I'm forgetting something."

"You're not," he'd replied. "We have this under control." 

She wondered what he thought of the look she had given him in return.

Now he sat in the armchair in the corner of her warroom and watched her. She couldn't be distracted by him though, so she focused on the reports, her lips moving silently as her eyes darted across the page.

It was minutes or maybe hours later that he stood. "Alina," he said. "Bed."

She ignored him. Her memory was getting worse, things were starting to slip and she needed to make sure that there was nothing she was missing. Something was nagging at her, wouldn't let go. Even the slightest mistake could –

The reports disappeared from her hand and she looked up, startled. The general stood over her, lips pressed together, eyes hard.

"Hey," she protested, "I was reading –"

He had picked her up and put her over his shoulder before she realized what was happening. She struggled for a few seconds, but she was tired and his grip was strong; soon she lay, resigned, as he carried her up the stairs. 

Despite the strength of his hands, he laid her on their bed gently as he had after the explosion. Her thoughts ran back to that, scattered for a second. But then he straightened and her hand shot out, knuckles white as her fingers gripped his shirt.

"Stay with me," she whispered.

"You need sleep." This was getting to be a refrain. And she did need sleep; she could feel the way her body nearly sagged into the mattress. But she needed him with her more.

"Stay with me," she repeated, gaze switching between each of his eyes. He hesitated and she pulled him close. "Please."

She was aware, as she said it, that keeping him there was more than part of the plan. As desperate as she was for it not to be true, there was something else between them, something that kept her even when it would have been easier to draw away. Perhaps once they had related to each other like a moth and a flame, but whatever was left now was something else. If the metaphor applied, she was more likely to be at once the flame and the wick: both the promise of destruction and the fulfillment of it. Both consumer and consumed.

She pulled him towards her and he relented. In the near darkness, his lips found hers.

Some time later they lay on their backs, naked, panting, just enough light from their open curtains to see. Alina's eyes were beginning to close as her husband reached a hand to his shoulder. He held up his fingers, starlight sparkling on the wet smear of blood.

"Alina." His breath was still heavy, his voice serious.

She forced her eyes open and into focus, couldn't remember if that had been from her fingernails or teeth. "You liked it," she mumbled, feeling the beginnings of sleep creeping up on her, fighting it.

He waited until his breath was even before speaking again, and when he did, it was quiet, low. "If you keep this up, you'll kill us both."

Any reply she gave was indistinct, jumbled as she was swept into unconsciousness. But in her mind the response was clear.

_Yes_ , she thought. _Yes_.

* * *

Aleksander leaned back in the chair, his bandaged shoulder throbbing only slightly, and watched his wife sleep. The stars on the horizon were dimming with the first hint of dawn and she lay spread across the bed, pale arms flung to either side in sharp contrast to the sheets. Her hair, nearly all white now, was fanned across the pillow; the sheet covering her body and the halo around her head reminded him of the stained glass figures decorating the cathedral in which they'd wed.

He snorted softly to himself at the comparison. _Some saint_.

The angles of her body were frighteningly pronounced – a combination of too much coffee and too little real food. She was getting close to a breaking point; he could see it in her movements, the speed of her responses. Her ideas weren't lagging – as if her body was channeling all possible energy towards fighting this war – but that would come soon enough. He recognized the signs of obsession, of grief, even if she didn't see them in herself. His wife was teetering dangerously close to a brink, but he'd looked into the void beyond the cliff, had lived with it for years. He knew its edges well enough to keep her from falling. 

She'd done it once for him, after all.

She made a sound – not quite speech – and furrowed her brow. Another dream, or maybe a nightmare. He'd wake her soon, but for now he her body needed the sleep, even if it was full of ghosts. He was familiar enough with that.

In the minutes after he'd heard about the explosion, his chest had constricted, his breathing shortened. As his driver sped back to their home, he tried to focus his thoughts on finding the people who had done this to her and the variety of things he would do to them once he had. But he had none of the calm that usually came with applying himself – instead, the thoughts had only stoked his fury. When they pulled into his driveway he was out the door before the car had stopped.

He was fairly certain she did not love him, and he was equally certain that what he felt for her was also not love. It was a need, a hunger, something thrashing and animal that drove him to her, kept half of his mind occupied with her at all times. She had been the key to what he had needed once, but she'd been more than that, even then – he hadn't recognized his own loneliness and desperation until he saw it reflected in her eyes. 

She had started as the means to an end, but had become an end in her own right. He wasn't sure what that meant.

* * *

Alina and the general were in her warroom the next evening, going over that day's intelligence reports. She read them once, twice. Took off her hat, drank her cup of coffee, got a new one. Read them again.

When she finally looked up from the reports, he was watching her, waiting for her to say it. 

She wasn't going to give him that satisfaction.

"What do you think." 

She got up and walked to the coffee maker to pour herself more coffee, but realized she hadn't finished this mug. She drank it, slowly, then poured more. When she turned around he was behind her. 

"Alina." 

"No."

"We've worked towards this moment for months."

"We're not going to do it that way." 

"This is exactly the use case the Shadow was meant for."

She'd made him say it first; she exhaled slowly, shaking. "No."

"All three," he spoke clearly, enunciating, "of the divisions with the people who murdered your family are within a few day's distance from each other. It's a huge percentage of the Fjerdan military. With a small number of strategic attacks you can force them close enough that one Shadow can get them all."

He put his hands on her upper arms and she closed her eyes to avoid looking at him, shook her head. "It will also get everyone in those divisions who was _not_ responsible for murdering my family. Some of them weren't even born yet."

"Do you imagine they're innocent? This is war, Alina." 

She shook her head again. "It would destroy all the land around it. With the size we need, that's a radius of _miles_."

"A firefight would destroy the land as well. Imagine tanks, imagine rockets. Bullets. You've seen what that does to villages."

She had. She remembered their honeymoon, the devastation still etched into the forest decades later. " _Our_ villages, you mean? The Ravkan ones close to the border, the ones that would also be destroyed?"

"There's a cost to this," the general acknowledged. "There's always a cost." 

"There's another way to stop them. A way to be more discriminant."

"You know there isn't."

His words sat in her stomach, pricked at the corners of her eyes. She was going to do this; she was going to agree to it. But she gave him one last chance.

"Are you sorry, at all?" She heard the desperation in her voice, didn't care. "Do you regret any of this?"

"There are a great many things I regret having had to do." He lifted a hand and stroked her hair – gently, so gently. "Very few I regret having done."

Tears streamed past her closed eyelids, ran down her cheeks. He let her stand like that for minutes, able to wait until she came around. She took a deep breath, the weight of his necklace pressing down impossibly hard on her, her arms heavy with his bracelet, his wedding ring. She hated every part of herself that was like him, every part that made him confident that this was something she would do. 

Wasn't she what he had made her, after all? Wasn't that what he believed?

"Write the order," she whispered, barely able to hear herself. 

His hands softened on her shoulders. "My Alina." 

Tears fell from her from her lashes down to her jaw, dropped to the floor between them. When he drew closer and pressed a kiss to her forehead, she could feel his smile on her skin. Getting him to this point, to believe that this was his idea and his war, would have felt gratifying even a few weeks ago; now, though, there was a sick feeling in her stomach that wouldn't go away. She shuddered and forced herself to lean into his touch, willing her mind to blankness.

_I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream_.

* * *

_Foolish girl._

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there, we're so close – there's only one more chapter + epilogue. I'm not quite sure the etiquette, but I'm guessing I should post them at ~the same time?
> 
> A huge thank you to everyone who's been reading & letting me know they're enjoying it. It's really keeping me going on this last bit :)


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE GO ARE YOU READY

**T minus three days**

Zoya frowned as she looked around the wide open ballroom. The new foreign minister was trying her hand at something to keep spirits up in the midst of a war – God forbid the _Soveren_ Morozova stoop to the level of something so mundane – but twenty minutes in, Zoya felt confident in declaring the entire endeavor a failure. _Prezident_ Vakhrov might have been an incompetent asshole, but at least _he_ had known how to throw a party. 

The lieutenant wholeheartedly subscribed to a 'work hard, play hard' philosophy. She'd been doing plenty of the former recently and this event didn't seem like it would provide any of the latter: there was no dancing, the drinks were weak, and the men generously rounded up to so-so. One of them had been standing next to her talking for the last several minutes, but she hadn't needed more than a few seconds to recognize that he had an inflated sense of his own self-importance and – even worse – was horribly unattractive.

She had almost ditched this event in favor of showing up at Nikolai's hotel room, but Harshaw had wanted to come for whatever reason – so here she was. He seemed to be enjoying himself, talking to some _privat_ whose name Zoya couldn't be bothered to remember. Satisfied that he was taken care of, she resumed scanning the floor for men. There wasn't much to choose from; the raw material wasn't great and the war hadn't done anyone any favors. The ongoing fighting seemed to crumple suits and dull gazes, even in Os Alta. Then the doors opened, and Ivan walked in.

Ivan would have fallen squarely into the category of _her type –_ if she had been able to ignore the fact that he was neither rich nor powerful. Those disqualifications meant that she hadn't really bothered giving it a go before, but Ravka was at war and she was contemplating reevaluating her stance. Ivan did look like he could take care of her chiropractic needs resulting from weeks bent over her workstation, after all. She filed it away for consideration as her eyes slid over to the _Soveren_ Morozova.

The general – now there was a man who wore his suit as well at war as not. He probably wore no suit at all well, too; nothing about his marriage to her _sardzhent_ had changed the fact that Zoya would jump on that in about zero seconds if she were given half a chance. The fact that she never had been irritated her – most men at _least_ consider it before turning her down, but the general hadn't even pretended to do that. He walked behind Ivan, hand entwined with Alina's. 

When Zoya tore her eyes away from the general, her jaw dropped. Nikolai had mentioned that Alina hadn't seemed like herself lately though Zoya had certainly not asked – she wasn't interested in spending her time with Nikolai talking, about Alina no less – but nothing he could have said would have prepared her for this. 

Alina looked half-dead.

It wasn't just that her skin seemed to have lost whatever color from the weak Ravkan sunlight, though that was certainly a factor. Her eyes had deep smudges under them and she was uncharacteristically unfocused. Most surprisingly, she'd decided to show up without any sort of head covering. 

Zoya had never really concerned herself with whatever fashion choices married Ravkan women made – hair, scarf, they weren't nearly as attractive as Zoya either way. She might not have noticed anything unusual at all had Alina's hair not been a shockingly bright white.

She shook herself, refusing to let it get to her, but she watched though the sides of her eyes as the Morozovas made their way across the room shaking hands, nodding. She watched the reactions of the Ravkan politicians, the carefully veiled concern, and she wondered if it was more than just for the wife of their leader. 

No one said anything to the general, of course. No one who had gotten this far was _that_ stupid.

Sometimes, she reflected, insulated from criticism was the most dangerous place to be.

"Go talk at someone else," Zoya snapped at the man next to her, her patience thinned by concern in a way that she found almost unsettling. He looked surprised and she rolled her eyes dramatically. "You can't _possibly_ think I've been listening to you."

He moved away and she resumed watching the _Soveren_ Morozova from the corner of her eye. Despite having focused a large amount of her attention on the two of them, she was still surprised when Alina ended up in front of her, ghastly face tilted up slightly to Zoya's.

“ _Leytenant_ ,” Alina greeted her.

" _Sardzhent._ " She made sure her tone didn't betray any of her thoughts. Alina was certainly no worry of _hers_. "You made it out of the house."

A rueful smile. "Extensive security planning went into this excursion." 

"I hope it's worth it."

Zoya readied herself for a retort, but none came. "I want another demonstration of the suit." 

The girl may look like she had one foot in the grave, but she was still thinking about work; Zoya could appreciate that. She lifted an eyebrow. "It will be a little hard to show you how it holds up against the Shadow if you don't leave the house."

“I don't want to see it against the Shadow, I want to see it in normal surroundings. Can you bring a couple? Tomorrow?” 

Zoya hesitated. In that silence Alina glanced back at her husband, and that look gave Zoya almost as much pause as anything else. It wasn't fear, it wasn't distain … It was … 

"Can you?"

Alina had turned back towards the lieutenant, her gaze uncomfortably intense. Zoya tossed her curls over her shoulder. "Send a car for me at ten. And I'll bring Harshaw."

The corner of Alina's lips flicked up, as if in pleasure; the smile disappeared just as quickly. She squeezed Zoya's hand and walked back to where the general was nominally involved in a conversation but was clearly just watching his wife, his gaze level. 

It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

* * *

**T minus two days**

Genya's office in the new government building was what she'd dreamed of. She hadn't asked for a large office – hadn't asked for anything, actually – but the general knew her well enough to give her surroundings that made her status in his administration clear. Being a gorgeous woman meant that people often didn't take Genya seriously, and as tempted as she was to kill them for it, it was convenient cover for being an assassin. But she finally had a job now whose status she was satisfied with, and the large open floor with furniture warmer than anywhere else in the building said that the general was aware of how important that was to her. She didn't tend to decorate the places she lived or worked – there wasn't much of a point and what would she put up, anyway? – but here she'd gotten some old maps of the country framed and hung on the wall. She liked the way they looked, liked the deference people treated her with when they came into her office. She could get used to this. 

The window behind her desk faced the street in front of the building and a door in her side wall led straight to the general's office. He hadn't been spending much time there lately; ever since the explosion he mostly kept to his house, setting aside just a couple hours in the afternoon for any face-to-face meetings that needed to happen. He'd crossed the street forty minutes ago and Genya had sent the _meydzhor_ waiting for him into his office.

The war was getting worse – Alina nearly being killed was evidence of that. Genya had ruled out the Americans rather quickly and while process of elimination pointed to Fjerda, the lack of confirmation and continuing escalation in the fighting had been bothering her. Even stranger, she was feeling weirdly shut out of the whole thing. The general hadn't kept secrets from her before, his personal life – thankfully – aside. But now … 

She sighed and rubbed at the crick in her neck, pressing the spot hard with two fingers. She'd never get used to whatever flimsy contraption passed as an excuse for Ivan's bed.

The sun was beginning to slant into her eyes and she squinted out the window, wondering if she should close the blinds. Movement on the street below caught her eye and she stood and pressed her forehead to the window to see better. There was a large swarm of guards and a small armored contingent.

“Alina?” 

She'd spoken aloud for some unknown reason and she cursed herself (silently, this time) as she sat back down at her desk, chewing on her lower lip. Alina wouldn't have left the house to see the general, but Genya hadn't been instructed to prepare any rooms for meetings for her, either.

She didn't have to wonder very long. Alina showed up at Genya's door flanked by several guards, one of whom was carrying a large box. Genya poked her head out of her office and glanced towards where Ivan stood outside the general's door; he moved his head slightly, acknowledging that he didn't know what was happening either.

Alina looked terrible. She refused to cover her head now and hadn't let Genya touch her hair or makeup since the explosion, all things Genya had bemoaned at length and to no avail. She thought Alina probably needed a month of sleep and a seriously long bath – but who of them didn't, really?

She pushed thoughts thoughts aside and smiled easily, well-aware that any concern she had wouldn't show. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I need your help."

Alina walked into the room and the guard who was carrying the box set it down heavily on the desk before retreating and closing the door behind him. Genya walked over to the box, peeked inside. "What's this?"

Alina lifted a second box from the inside the first, though it was clearly a struggle for her to do so. Beneath it were complete sets of clothing for both the _Soveren_ Morozova – a uniform, a suit. Even socks. "Clothes," Alina explained ungracefully. "We need some changes."

Genya raised her brows in surprise. "The general's finally agreed to a more colorful wardrobe?"

If that was a smile Alina was attempting, it was not a success. She handed the box that she had been holding to Genya, visibly relieved when the weight of it left her hands.

Jesus, when had she gotten so _weak_? 

Genya opened the box and stared at its contents for a moment. Frowned. "Alina."

"Can you make the changes?"

She looked directly at her friend. "What exactly is going on?" She put all of her authority into that question. If she didn't have quite the command of the general, she knew plenty of people who were still frightened by the shadows in her voice.

But Alina didn't flinch. Genya imagined she'd spent a lot of time staring into dark corners recently. "Can you do it?"

Genya flicked her wrist dismissively. "Of course I can do it."

“Will you?”

“Will _you_ tell me what's happening?”

Alina took a step towards her friend and, though it took Genya by surprise, reached out a hand to the taller woman's cheek. It lingered there, fingers against her skin, as if trying to memorize the contours of her face. 

"I want you to grow old, Genya." Alina smiled. It wasn't the same smile that Genya had seen when she first met Alina, full of a nearly heartbreaking optimism and naivete. It was a smile reserved for war, with edges every bit as sharp as the pins holding up Genya's hair. "Isn't that enough?"

* * *

**T minus one day**

Ravka was not Nikolai's favorite country. 

In fact, the first time he visited, it hadn't made his list of top _seventy_ countries. He had enjoyed all of Europe and Latin America more – and that included his visits to a couple dozen genocide memorials. Even the sandstorm in Egypt had been preferable to the dark morbidity that he felt creeping into his bones the moment he arrived in Os Alta. He had been a politician's son for his whole life and knew better than to let it show, but his political education had also taught him to trust his gut.

Ravka was not Nikolai's favorite country and that would have been fine – if he hadn't also had the misfortune of Alina Starkov being one of his favorite people.

A year ago he couldn't have imagined being in Ravka for months, traveling with a man with whom at the time he'd exchanged fewer words than punches. But here he was, in a country he detested with a man he had barely tolerated at first, and the only thing he hated more than the thought of staying was the alternative.

Mal was sitting in the corner and fidgeting with the buttons on his uniform, something Nikolai had come to recognize as a contemplative rather than nervous gesture, and he knock surprised both of them. When Mal opened the door, the first thing Nikolai noticed was how the visitor's white hair fell over her shoulders. For a moment, Nikolai had the thought that she was a ghost of the girl he had known.

In a way she was, he supposed.

He stood and joined Mal at the door. "I thought it was dangerous for you to be out of the house."

"It is." Her voice was flat, and she blinked at him once, twice. Mal cleared his throat, and Nikolai shook his head in apology, stepping to the side and gesturing.

"Please, come in." 

The guards settled outside the door that Mal closed behind her and Nikolai took the chair he'd been in a minute before. Alina set a bag down at her feet and continued standing. 

Nikolai tapped a finger against the table a few times, examining her carefully. "I'm surprised you were allowed to come." He took pains to keep any accusation out of his voice. When he'd first arrived in the country, the situation would have screamed _hostage_ to him – now, though, he wasn't so sure.

"I told him that I'd make sure that by the end of the evening you two were booked on a return flight back to America." No specification of who _he_ was, of course, but there wasn't really any need. "That apparently merits the security effort." She waved back to the door behind which a small armed battalion stood waiting. 

He could sense the way Mal tensed beside him. "We talked about this before," Nikolai said, his voice light even as his unease grew. "We're not going anywhere without you." 

She looked at him and blinked again, bored, clearly expecting this response. As she bent down to pull something out of her bag Nikolai felt his own body tense in anticipation, easing only when he saw that what she was taking out of the bag were papers.

Had it really come down to this? 

She held two folders, one thin manilla and one thick sealed envelope. She put the thinner on Nikolai's desk and tapped the it with her finger. "You said you were here to help me. And now I need your help." 

"What is it?" Mal asked.

"I'll let you read it. If you help me with this," she indicated the folder on the desk, then the other, sealed envelope, "then tomorrow, on your flight home, you can read this."

"Why should we go back at all?" Mal asked.

"You'll understand once you've read this file," Alina said, wrapping her arms around the envelope and pressing it close to her chest.

"You want us," Nikolai clarified, "to hold off on reading whatever it is that is going to make it clear why we're going home until we're already in the air?" She nodded and Nikolai frowned. "That hardly seems fair, Alina." 

A corner of her lip quirked up. Logically he knew it was a smile, but emotionally it read as nothing of the sort. "I hope you weren't expecting fairness from me, Nikolai. It isn't one of my specialties."

He had run out of charm. "Alina –"

"Book the flight."

"We're not going," Mal insisted. 

She sighed, turning back to Nikolai. He considered his options carefully, took a deep breath before replying. "This isn't really up for debate, is it?" When she shook her head again, it was his turn to sigh. "I'll reserve seats for three."

She shrugged. "Whatever makes you feel better."

"No," Mal said. "I'm not going if she's not."

Nikolai widened his eyes, indicating that Mal should let him handle this one. "I'll _book it_. Satisfied?" Alina hesitated, nodded. "Now what is it you want our help with?"

Alina walked over to one of the beds – Mal's, though she would have no way of knowing it – and examining it carefully before sitting and testing the edge. Apparently satisfied, she lay back, and almost immediately her body relaxed – everything except her hold on the sealed folder, anyway.

"Read the papers first," she said, halfway asleep already. "They should explain it. Wake me up when you're ready to talk."

Nikolai and Mal exchanged a glance, but Mal pulled up a chair. Nikolai flipped the folder open, picked up the first page, and began to read. 

* * *

**T minus zero days**

Ivan looked at the clock in the kitchen, frowned. The general had taken Fedyor this morning, which Ivan didn't like; he liked it even less when he heard the very specific instructions the general had for him. But he was a professional and would do as asked – except that now Alina was running late. 

Ivan climbed the stairs to her bedroom two at a time, frustrated by her dawdling as much as his own fatigue. He hadn't slept well because Genya hadn't slept well; she'd given up on sleep and had gone into her office at an ungodly hour, and he had just lain awake once she'd gone. He had come to rely on her presence too much. He shouldn't let himself do that.

He had to pound on the bedroom door twice – the second time loud enough that even if she'd been sleeping in the basement she would have heard it. When she finally she opened the door, she stared at him.

"You're late," he grumbled. He would never have used that tone with the general and he would never have used it with Alina if Genya had been there. But Genya wasn't there, and that was part of the problem in the first place.

Her eyes were wide, confused. Ivan wasn't a military commander and wasn't privy to the specifics, but even he had figured that something was going down today. It was early still but the sun was about to come out, and the general had instructed him that now was the time they'd need to move. 

"Sorry," she mumbled in English, like an American. She glanced behind him. "Where's Fedyor?"

He wasn't sure if her insistence on speaking English or her atrocious accent when she didn't was worse. "With the general. I'm taking you there," he replied – in Ravkan, like a normal person.

She nodded vaguely for a moment, then shrugged. She looked around the room, as if there might be something she was forgetting, and then picked up her bag and followed him down the stairs. 

The air was crisp and cool, the beginnings of the sun's rays just starting to be visible. It would be a long day, but at the end of it he would be able to rest. Get some sleep, with or without Genya there. 

He'd just put his keys in the ignition when Alina stopped several yards away from the vehicle, her head bent as if examining the ground. He rolled down the window. "What is it?" he snapped.

She lifted her foot as if to show him, and the boot she was wearing fell partially off her foot. "My shoelace broke." 

He pressed his fingers to his eyes, deeply tired. "We're already late." 

"I need a new one. I think there are ... some in the ... was it in the living room?" She began walking back towards the house but her pace was glacial and Ivan had had it with being off-schedule. If one of them suffered for the delay it would not be Alina.

He slammed the car into park and got out. "I will get it. Wait in the car." She nodded her thanks as he began jogging towards the house. She pulled the phone out of her pocket and pressed the power button. Once, twice. Again.

He was nearly to the door when she called out to him. "My phone's dead."

"There's a charger in the car," he bit back.

"I need to call my husband." 

He ground his teeth together to avoid making a comment that would threaten his job. He turned and threw his phone at her, not gently, and she caught it – but just barely. That was a close one, and he collected himself. "Use mine," he said, only a few notches off of polite. "Just be in the car when I get back." 

He thought he heard her calling "thanks" after him, the _a_ stretched out the stupid way that Americans do. He jogged into the house and down the hallway, flicking on the light to the basement before opening the door and heading down the stairs. The shoelaces were kept in a box in a far corner. She could relace the shoe on the road, so they should only be a few minutes behind. He could make that up in the car. 

He was grumbling to himself about being a babysitter and about American incompetence as he walked down the stairs, so he didn't hear the footsteps in the hall. He was almost to the box in the corner when the door to the basement slammed shut and the lock clicked into place. 

He was going to kill her. He ran up the stairs and reached into his pocket for his keys, only at that moment realizing that he'd left them in the car. There was a sound that he recognized as a table being dragged and propped in front of the doorway.

"Open the door!" He was shouting and pounding on the heavy wood when the lights flicked off. He was screaming loudly enough that he didn't hear the car as the engine came to life, tires screeching on the pavement. He didn't hear the sound of his phone – carelessly dropped on the floor a couple rooms away – receiving a text from his employer.

* * *

Technically, Alina knew how to drive. She had passed the driving test the summer before she started university in a fourth-hand car that turned out to be worth less than the incredibly small sum of money Mal had paid for it. It had felt like a death trap and the campus bus system had enabled her to not drive it anymore than she absolutely needed to.

Now though she sped through roads far narrower than she was accustomed to at speeds far faster than was safe. She knew these roads by heart from the bird's eye view of a map she had learned them from – she'd memorized every mile marker, every turn, plotted out the path in her head over and over again. She noted each landmark she passed as she barreled down the mountain roads in a way that would have rivaled even Ana. 

About thirty miles in, her phone had begun ringing incessantly; it had abruptly gone silent an hour ago. She had known her husband would find out and that was fine, she had been counting on that. She was counting on him coming after her, too; she just needed to be a little ahead of him. She glanced at the clock, then quickly back at the road in time to take another too-sharp turn. 

Her hand fumbled underneath her seat, groping until her fingertips hit something hard. She leaned sideways as far as she could and pulled out the gun she knew Ivan kept there, dropping it into the cupholder with her phone.

The trees became sparser as she gained elevation, getting closer to her destination. The hiking path was inconspicuous and she nearly missed it, but she swung the protesting SUV around and remembered to turn off the ignition before hopping out, grabbing her bag, gun, and phone, and running up the packed dirt. She tripped after just a few steps and looked down to realize that the boot she'd severed the shoelace of had come partway off. She kicked it to the side and threw her other boot after it as she jogged the rest of the way up the hill.

There was a large, flat opening with the Shadow positioned in the middle of it, right where the general had ordered it; she stood at the edge of the plateau for a moment to get her breath. This weapon was larger than any they'd tested with – it would have to be, since it was meant to destroy everything within a five mile radius. The area was littered with gloves, helmets, and suits that had been discarded by the crew putting it together, no longer needed after they'd finished; the assembly was the time when the Shadow posed the most threat. 

Well, until detonation, anyway. 

Right, about that. Alina opened her bag and pulled out the small toolkit she'd brought, setting it out on the ground next to the Shadow. She considered grabbing a helmet and gloves, but when she'd tried the gloves Zoya had brought a couple days ago they were still stiff – her uniform was already somewhat more difficult to move in than she was used to and she wasn't sure could afford to be slowed down any more than she already was. She took a deep breath, picked up a screwdriver, and began. 

She was tightening the last bolt when her phone rang. She hadn't expected the general to call again, thought he'd probably be too busy using his phone tracking her own. She pulled the phone out of her pocket, brow furrowed. 

It wasn't who she'd expected.

She answered and put the phone to her hear. "Nikolai?" she asked. She'd been riding an adrenaline high since she closed the basement door; everything had been working so well, clicking into place like the tumblers on a lock. This was the first indication that everything might not be on track. 

"Alina, thank God." He sounded out of breath. 

"Was there a problem with the information?" This was the part that she had the least control over, that she had been relying on Nikolai for. If it hadn't gone well –

"The – oh. Oh, no. This morning was apparently quite the shit show on the border." A pause. "My mother says thank you, by the way."

"I didn't didn't do it for her." Another thought occurred to her: "Shouldn't you be on a plane?"

"It doesn't leave for a few hours. But, Alina, we just finished reading the file you'd left us –"

" _You read the file?_ " Alina's exhausted, over-stressed body flipped from relief to fury in half a second. "You weren't supposed to read it until you were in the air!"

"Are you _insane_ , Alina?" Nikolai was shouting now, composure completely gone. "There was no way in hell we were waiting for that! We only waited this long because we've been up the entire night trying to explain to the ambassador exactly how we came across information that Fjerdan troops were gathering on the border with the intent of massacring Ravkan civilians."

She squeezed her eyes shut and fought a growl. This had been a risk, of course; she'd had no way to ensure that they wouldn't read the contents of the envelope before she wanted them too. She had just had to hope they'd do what she asked.

Nothing to do about it now. She exhaled heavily, dusting off the knees of her uniform and standing, scanning the visible roads. Empty.

"Alina." She hadn't realized Mal was on the line. "You don't have to do this."

Her anger cooled, froze. She didn't reply.

There was a pause before Nikolai spoke. "You can meet us at the airport – I got you a ticket. It's not too late."

She gave a hard, cold bark of laughter. "You think I can just show up at the airport and leave? How exactly would I do that?"

"We'll figure out a way." Lantstov optimism at its finest. "You can still come out of this." 

"I can't," she whispered. It almost broke her heart, the confidence that the two of them had in her. She couldn't explain to them how misplaced it was, how even if she went with them they wouldn't be flying home with the Alina they thought they knew. 

She was a weapon now. There was only one way to guarantee that she could never be used to hurt anyone again.

"You don't have to do this," Mal said, and she caught the waver in his voice.

"I really do." She gave a long exhale. "You should go catch the flight."

"I'm not leaving without you." Mal, loyal to a fault. She thought back to the first night in their apartment together, back to feeling the vibrations of his voice while she pressed against his chest, to the evenings she'd spent memorizing his face with her fingers, her lips. Back to time when two orphans had each other, and that was enough. 

That time and those people were gone. She squeezed her eyes shut. "Make sure he gets on that plane, Nikolai."

"No," Mal insisted.

" _Please_." She was begging now, running out of time. "Please go. It's going to be worse here before it gets better and –"

Mal interrupted. "I can't let you –"

" _You don't have a choice._ " She took a deep breath in the stunned silence that followed, spoke lower, more conciliatory. "I've sacrificed myself for this country. Don't make me sacrifice you, too."

The silence on the line was thick. She could now see a black car making its way towards her, taking the turns dangerously quickly. "I have to go," she whispered.

"Come find us," Nikolai said. "After."

Alina smiled sadly as she watched the car with her husband approach, screeching to a halt just out of sight. "There isn't an after, Nikolai."

The car doors slammed and she hung up, dropping the phone on the ground. Almost immediately she heard footsteps pounding up the path, could see the tops of their heads coming into view as they ran up the hill. She took a deep breath and pulled out her gun.

"Over here," she shouted, walking backwards away from where they would enter the clearing. 

She was at the other side when they made it to the top of the hill, and she trained her gun on the general immediately. In her peripheral vision she saw Fedyor take out his own weapon and point it towards her, but she was focused on her husband.

On his fury. Whatever storm and cold anger lay behind his face didn't concern her any longer. There had been, once, an Alina that would have dropped what she was doing in the face of that stare. 

That Alina didn't exist any more, either. She hadn't for a long time. 

She indicated Fedyor with her head without taking her eyes off her husband. "Send him home."

"No."

"Send him home," she repeated, "or I'll shoot."

He sneered, well-aware that she had no idea what she was doing when it came to firearms. "Fedyor could shoot the gun out of your hand before you managed to get a bullet anywhere near me." He circled the periphery, edging towards her, and she kept the space between them.

"If it's my aim that's the problem." She bent her elbow and repositioned the barrel of the gun so it touched the side of her forehead, gave a pathetic imitation of a smile. "Even _I_ would find it hard to miss this."

The general growled but stopped moving. Fedyor stilled. "You wouldn't dare."

"Do you believe that or just hope?" He didn't answer and she sighed, jostling the handle of the gun slightly as a reminder. "Send him away, Aleks, or this will be a very short conversation. And I have the feeling you have a lot of questions."

For a moment, she thought that he would lunge at her from across the clearing, threats be damned. But then – "Go." His voice was gravel and he didn't take his eyes off hers when he gave the order.

Fedyor blinked, startled, looked at the general. " _Soverenyi_ –" 

" _Go_." His expression was all fury – there was no concern that he wouldn't be able to handle her by himself. She'd been counting on the fact that in her weakened state she wouldn't look like much of a threat, even with the gun. He clearly didn't consider her to be one. _Good_.

The guard glanced between the two of them in disbelief, but neither of them took their eyes off the other. Finally, Fedyor turned and made his way down the path. She waited until she heard the ignition and the sound of the car faded into the distance before removing the barrel of the gun from her forehead and training it on her husband again.

They were alone, at the beginning of the end. They circled in silence for a few moments and she noticed that his suit fit awkwardly, didn't follow his movements as well as usual. "I thought," she said, "that it was about time for us to have a real conversation."

"A conversation that began," his voice was ice, black and deep, "with you telling the Americans our plan to attack the Fjerdan troops."

"I didn't tell them the plan. I told them where the troops were and dropped a few hints about the Fjerdan fondness for massacres."

"You told them enough." His jaw clenched. "We got them where we wanted them and then _you_ told the Americans they were going to attack. You know what they did this morning? The Americans called the Fjerdan court and fucking _cowboyed in_ their own people and U.N. inspectors to the encampments on the border, turning anything we could do into a declaration of war on the entire region and the United States besides."

"It kept them from attacking us."

"That wasn't the goal, Alina." He stepped a few paces closer, she kept moving to the side. "We were getting," he gritted out, "our revenge." 

"We still are, Aleksander." 

" _We could have destroyed them_."

" _We didn't have to._ Whether or not they were planning a massacre this time around, it looks damning enough to prompt an investigation. With any luck, it will include a review thorough enough to include Dva Stolba and keep Fjerda from doing something similar ever again."

"And would that," he asked, voice clipped, "satisfy your need for revenge?"

"For my parents, it's the best I can hope for." She took a breath, indicated the space around them. "This is the rest of it."

His breathing was heavy, audible even from where she was. "Explain." 

"You lied to me from the moment we met. You brought me here with promises and then you used me, trapped me." There was a hitch in her breath, but she shook her head. "And this is my revenge for that. For being reduced to nothing more than a weapon in your hands." 

"Anything I did was for Ravka –"

"You've never known what Ravka really needs."

"And you do," he spat. She didn't reply.

There were breaths as they circled each other, weapon between them. 

"So now what." His grey eyes narrowed, furious. "Are you actually planning to shoot me?" 

She blinked. "Of course not. It's not even loaded." She pointed the gun in the distance and pulled the trigger a few times, the _click click click_ proving her point. Even Ivan wasn't stupid enough to leave a loaded gun just sitting in the car. She tossed it aside. 

He hesitated in surprise but began walking straight towards her and she backed up, keeping the distance between them. She knew she wouldn't win if it came down to a physical fight, and she was doing everything she could to see that it wouldn't.

"You told me once that in war all the choices are bad ones. That we choose what we can live with."

"And."

"And I can't live with the choices you made." 

"You made those choices, too."

"But at what cost?"

He gestured impatience, picked up the pace. "Peace isn't cheap. There will be many more deaths either way."

"There don't have to be. I can end this with just two." She stumbled as she moved backwards, righted herself in time to keep the distance between them. "You want their names? I can give them to you." She ignored the warning in his eyes. "Alina. Aleksander."

"Don't be melodramatic."

That was rich, coming from him. "Even if I let you make it out of here alive," she continued, "tomorrow the whole world – and more importantly, Ravka – will know everything you've done. The orders, the details, the history. The civil war, Keramzin, what you had planned with Shadow for today. Everything. The world will despise you, and no one in Ravka will ever follow you again."

He shrugged. "There's always been speculation. It's never mattered before."

"It's well-documented this time. I found everything I needed." Her smile was tight. "Though your filing system could use some work." 

It took him a moment, but she watched realization slowly creep across his features. She watched him put together that the bomb that had nearly killed her a week ago had been hers all long, that she'd used it to cover the fact that she'd had to pick the lock – very badly – and that his office hadn't been just the way he'd left it. She had out generaled the general, and watching him grasp the extent of it was gratifying.

And it was enough. She pulled out a palm-sized black box from her pocket and entered her passcode into the device. 

He shook his head in disbelief, still unconcerned. "You came here to stop me from detonating the Shadow in case the Americans didn't intervene. You can't possibly expect me to believe that you're going to use it and kill everyone now."

"While I was waiting for you to get here, I adjusted the radius." She smiled, crookedly. "It won't make it to the nearest village, but it's plenty to kill the two of us."

"You _want_ to die." 

"What I _want_ , _Soverenyi_ , is revenge. And if my life is the price for it," she bared her teeth, "then it's what I will pay."

He looked back and forth between the box and the Shadow, considering. "It takes two unique passcodes to detonate the Shadow, and only three people have them. If you were thinking of using Ana's, I had it deactivated last month."

"I'm planning on using yours."

Disgust flitted across his face. "You think you're going to be able to trick me into entering it in that box?"

"No," Alina shook her head, smiled sadly. "I think I already did." 

She'd memorized the passcode that had been texted to her phone when he'd entered it during the demonstration a month earlier. Now her fingers were steady as she punched it in, hesitating slightly before the last digit. For the first time since he arrived, she saw his confidence falter. "Goodbye, Aleksander."

"Alina – "

The beep confirmed the code, gave them fifteen seconds before the bomb went off. The first second and a half, she thought that he would lunge straight for her, and the look in his eyes convinced her he could cross the distance in a single leap. But seconds were precious now – after the briefest hesitation they both turned and ran towards the discarded outfits around them.

There was no time for either of them to put on the full body suits. Alina shoved her hands into the gloves, felt them tighten around her wrist. She thought she saw something moving on the edges of her vision, but then the suction of her helmet grasped around her neck and everything plunged into darkness. There was silence for a moment, then her helmet was filled with sound: first her own heavy breathing, then her scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue is up too! go go go –-


	24. Epilogue

** Epilogue **

At first, Ravka mourned. 

Both of their leaders had been killed in the same day in an accident that had narrowly avoided swallowing several villages – Ravkan and Fjerdan – in the process. The shock of the villagers staring into a black mass that had once been the _Soveren Morozova_ ... more than one fell to their knees and prayed. It was how legends began.

Before Ravka had had a full day of mourning, it was revealed that U.N. observers and American troops had intercepted the Fjerdan military positioned on the border, allegedly poised to attack – entire divisions had been directed back towards the center of the country and a massacre had narrowly been avoided. Fjerda's military was undergoing some forced introspection, and speculations of trials for war crimes – even some dating back decades – were rampant. This was little consolation for the villagers who had nearly lost their lives; their mourning turned inwards, to what had almost happened.

And then, in the power vacuum that ensued, the media began to come out with reports on General Morozova, leaked documents from his time in the military. The documents were shocking in both their depth and their breadth – they included orders as well as what appeared to be notes to himself, spanning from his first year in the military through his last order as commander. They brought to light his own moral calculus, his ruthless decisiveness, his deliberate destruction of an orphanage. The country was outraged, even before the reports published the order he'd given the order to detonate the Shadow – one much larger than the one that had accidentally detonated a few days prior, one that would have ensured that those villages that had narrowly escaped a massacre would have been destroyed.

People rioted, there were protests in the streets. But who were they protesting, now that the general was gone? There were debates around who would assume power and the air was thick with unrest and fear. In a last ditch attempt, the foreign minister asked for U.N. peacekeepers while election protocols were established.

Eventually, Ravka stabilized. 

Fjerda now had enough of their own problems to worry about that they didn't pose an immediate threat to Ravka; without that pressure from the north, Minister Zhuralev was able to negotiate and sign a tentative truce with Shu Han. It was far from perfect, but it gave them some breathing room. For the first time in years it felt like Ravka was no longer at war. 

You can't recover with a knife still in your side. Pulling the blade out comes with a rush of blood and pain and a new set of risks, but unless you take it out your body will spend its energy fighting the intruder, unable to scar over – only once the knife is removed will your body start to mend itself. You can begin to become whole again, but only once the blade is gone.

Eventually, Ravka healed.

* * *

The town was used to foreigners. Its position on a beach that was hard to get to from the mainland meant that lots of people arrived who were hiding from something. They'd stay for a few months until they realized that they couldn't outrun their own demons, then go back to whatever lives they'd led before. 

And that was fine. That was the pace of the town. 

So when the girl showed up one day, heads didn't turn. Even having enough cash on hand to comfortably purchase a one-room house and the surrounding beach wasn't particularly unusual given the distribution of trust funds among foreigners who made it there. And in a town with plenty of peroxide- and sun-bleached hair, her own white halo went unnoticed, or mostly so.

The girl kept to herself. She walked along the beach slowly, never entering the water, never with anyone. She bought food at the market but even as she learned the local tongue she never spoke just to chat. She'd sit sometimes in the back of the bar on hot days, nursing a cold beer for hours, eyes glued to the television tuned to a news channel in the corner.

When the power went out at the bar on an afternoon she happened to be there, she watched with interest as the owner cursed colorfully at the generator out back. The solar power had stopped working that morning and now the backup generator was down for no clear reason. The day was almost unbearably hot without the fans on, but he was more worried about the loss of business from ice that would soon begin to melt. After a few unfruitful minutes, he looked up to see the girl standing in front of him, squinting at the roof. 

"You have ladder?" 

If he was skeptical, he didn't let it show. By the time he returned with a ladder, she'd selected several tools from his box and quickly disappeared above the roof. When the power returned a few minutes later, she dropped back down without fanfare, brushing off her linen pants.

She could fix nearly everything, it turned out, and people began to call her whenever their appliances broke down. She never spoke much but worked quickly, and if she lingered a few extra minutes any time she found herself fixing panels on the roof no one seemed to care. She accepted whatever payment people gave with the same nod before heading back to her own house again. 

There were whispers about her in the town from time to time – especially on afternoons when she showed up at the bar with a large ring on her finger, the black stone nearly swallowing her knuckles – but for the most part people minded their own business. Surfers came and went and the girl remained, cooking meals for herself in her small hut, walking by the sea. 

The girl didn't fit in, but it didn't matter. She didn't have to.

* * *

Alina didn't mind the heat. And that was lucky, because it was nearly always hot. 

She sat on the beach watching the sun set over the water. In the slightly-over-a-year she'd been here, she had caught the sunset nearly every day. Her own skin had bronzed, a deep olive tan that made the white of her hair even more dramatic. 

She liked the sun. It reminded her of another time.

_Most people can't live with any of them._ Those were the words that had echoed through her during her underground travels out of Ravka, the months of trains and busses and fake passports until she'd found herself as far from her old life and faked death as she could get. Those were the words that haunted her still. 

He had been right about that, at least – even though she was able to stop both the general and herself from destroying anything more than they already had, she found she desperately, desperately didn't want to live with the things she'd done. Her actions might have been for the good of the country, but she was hardly innocent; she knew how much the power had gotten to her, how good it felt. How tempting it had been to give in to the general's way of thinking. 

How if she had, she might have had a chance at something resembling happiness. 

But she didn't. She wouldn't abandon the things she believed in, could barely stomach the things she'd had to do. But as hard as it was to live after all of that, she still hadn't wanted to die. 

She'd found everything on the general's past, compiled it meticulously. She'd laid out his whole history, a scathing denouncement of General Morozova, his violent means and dubious ends. Nikolai and Mal had done their jobs getting it to the right media networks, and the media, predictably, had run with the story. She'd given them everything they needed to ensure that he would be destroyed in the press, buried. She'd handed them the general on a silver platter.

But she hadn't given them Aleksander. Not those stories he had shared with her in the weeks before she killed him, a boy and his mother, frightened, lost, casualties and hostages of war. It had been a life that no child could deserve and that no woman could be asked to bear, and those stories – those were not for the world. Those, she didn't share.

When she'd thought about surviving at all – a chance she knew depended on being able to develop a material that could survive the Shadow and outmaneuvering the general at every step and even then was vanishingly small – she had thought she'd feel more satisfaction than she did now. 

She had pored over the news in her travels, watching as Ravka reeled in the wake of what she'd done. Nikolai had left coded comments in his interviews, sending a beacon into the darkness, hoping against hope that she'd survived and that she would get in touch with him. She would have smiled reading those articles if she smiled at all anymore. She'd caught a televised interview in the weeks after the election – the sound was too low to hear and she couldn't read the language the subtitles were in, but she saw a glimpse of bright red hair and a brief interview with Genya, alive and well. _It looks like we may both grow old_ , Alina had thought, grimly. _A blessing and a curse_.

Her life stretched out in a featureless eternity before her, punctuated only by nightmares. She hadn't been ready for the blackness of the Shadow when it enveloped her, the way she watched things fall apart in the echolocation, the phantom feeling of matter brushing against her. The Shadow had been like a living, breathing creature. More nights than not she woke from its clutches short of breath, her heart pounding in her ears.

She had other dreams, too. Dreams where she explained to Genya, to Nikolai, even to Zoya. Dreams where she hadn't been so hungry for vengance, dreams where a taste of the power to get revenge hadn't sent her careening over the edge. Dreams where the only way to stop herself hadn't been her own death. 

She had wanted the same thing the general had wanted. And if she was a better person because she stopped herself from getting it, the thought didn't bring her much comfort.

She'd made a small fortune selling the reminders of her past – the necklace he'd given her, the bracelet, her wedding ring. His jewelry had been enough to ensure that she could live in comfort indefinitely, even without trying to finding a buyer for _Zwarte Ijs_. She was set for life.

And she was lonely. It wore away at her a little bit each day, the lonliness and her own conscience the only things she couldn't outrun. Out of all the people to be stuck at the end of the world with, why did it have to be herself?

The sun began to set and she rotated the orange she held in her hands, feeling the texture of the skin on her fingertips before propping her elbows onto her bent knees and starting to peel it. A bird flew overhead and she tossed a small part of the rind in its direction, watching as it caught the peel in its beak. 

She initially thought she imagined the footsteps – it wouldn't be the first time – but they became louder, more solid as they approached. When they stopped a few feet behind her she didn't turn around to see who it was. She didn't need to.

The sun started to sink below the horizon. She ate a segment of orange, then another, deliberately unhurried. It was some minutes before she heard the voice she'd grown to ache for and despise in equal measure. "You were hard to find." 

She peeled off another orange segment, ate it slowly before replying. "Not as hard as you were to kill, apparently." 

She'd wondered about that in the last year and a half since the incident – wondered a lot. She thought back frequently to how his suit hadn't fit quite right, wondered if it had been the Shadow-resistant outfit that Genya had made for him and if so, if it had been a deliberate choice or just coincidence that he'd worn it that day. Wondered if the reason she'd asked Genya to modify one of his outfits in addition to one of hers had really been to keep her cover or if she'd meant to give him a fighting chance.

He sat next to her, looping his arms around his knees, and she examined him through the corner of her eye. He wore a shirt and pants in the local style – black, as always, and his skin was white, unburnt. He looked as much at ease in exile on a beach as he had commanding a war. She hated that.

"Why did you come?" When he didn't reply, she asked: "Are you here to kill me?"

"I considered it," he acknowledged. "I'm not known for being forgiving."

She gave a puff of laughter. "Hard to start a reputation for that now." 

"Indeed."

The sun sank lower. "Are you angry?"

"I was. I should be." He inhaled. "You let the media turn me into a monster." 

"I released the papers," she replied firmly, shaking her head, "but a monster – that was something you made yourself."

There was a minute of silence. "You came out of this whole thing rather well," he observed, an edge to his voice. "If you had played it right, you could have gotten whatever you wanted. Probably had your pick of countries that would have canonized you."

"Yeah, well." She scratched her head with one hand, uncomfortable and trying not to show it. "I make a better martyr than a saint." 

A weak excuse. He knew that she would have gone crazy with the power, just as he had. She knew he knew – there were too much alike to pretend otherwise. But he didn't call her on her evasion and she was, after everything, grateful.

She bit into another segment of the orange. "So why are you here?" 

"You're still my wife."

"Given that we're both dead, I don't think that would hold up in court."

"Alina."

She shivered. She hated herself for wanting this. They had each chosen not to die – yet another decision to live with. "Why are you here." Her voice was harsh, gravel.

"You keep asking why I'm here, but you haven't asked me to leave." He paused, giving her the chance to do so. 

She wouldn't, of course. 

The sun moved faster below the horizon and she finished the last of her orange without offering him any. She squinted at the rays, waited until the sun fell the last few degrees. When she spoke, the words tumbled out, almost tripping over themselves. "Could you be happy here, though? Isolated? Without power?" 

"Can you?"

She turned towards him, looked at him full on for the first time. The slope of his cheekbones, the grey of his eyes. He was her monster – declawed now, but hers all the same. For the first time, the beach around her began to feel like home. "Happy enough," she said. With him there, she realized, meant it.

His gaze held hers and she felt the weight of the loneliness of the last eighteen months lift a little. They were powerless now: the only thing she could control was her own little life and that of the man next to her. And that, perhaps, was a life worth living.

"Then so can I." She lifted an eyebrow at him and he smiled. "For now."

Her breath caught. The last of the sunlight played over his features, cast his cheeks in shadow. She heard the beat of her own heart in the stillness. "You know I'll fight to keep you from getting power ever again."

His expression didn't change and his eyes didn't move from hers as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed the scar on her palm gently before resting their fingers, now entwined, in the sand. "I look forward to it."

She held his gaze as he smiled at her, steady, calm. And after a minute, she smiled back. 

The ocean swallowed the last rays of sun. The two of them sat, unmoving in the darkness, until it seemed that they were swallowed, too.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END.  
> THE. END.  
> THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> This was my first attempt at fanfiction ever, and I want to thank each and every one of you who ever left kudos or commented or messaged me – I have appreciated and needed the encouragement so much. SO MUCH. 
> 
> For those of you who just joined, thank you for coming on this journey, and please feel free to leave a comment no matter when! I'd still love to hear from you. :)
> 
> WHAT'S NEXT and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: 
> 
> I am going to take a break for a bit, but I'm not planning to leave the 'verse forever! If there are in-universe ficlets you want (genya/ivan? the general seeing alina's vaguely-referenced-in-chapter-two tattoo for the first time??) you can feel free to toss them my way (tirkdi.tumblr.com, come say hi!). I'll probably start getting to them a month or two from now. I am planning to post a three part Grace & the Ambassador backstory on AO3 in the near future, too. 
> 
> And for thank yous ...
> 
> Thank you, once again, to everyone who encouraged me along the way. It really kept me going. Other than the comments, there have also been [a few amazing fanmixes/edits](http://tirkdi.tumblr.com/search/%23the+shadow+of+war+fanstuff) that I saw for this fic and you should check those out! They were beyond thrilling to see and I was so excited to have inspired such amazing creativity in other people.
> 
> Thanks, of course, to Leigh Bardugo, who gave us such fantastic characters to play around with. The Grisha Trilogy got me writing again for the first time in a long while, and I owe a lot to that.
> 
> Many thanks to bff Anjali who told me to read the Grisha trilogy in the first place and who pushed me to not give up on Shadow and Bone before I got to the makeout scene. Excellent call, obviously.
> 
> And a huge, huge thank you to my beta reader and partner, Ben. He read the entire Grisha trilogy just so he could beta read this, spent countless hours at coffee shops with me while I wrote, read every chapter before I posted it here – sometimes _twice_ – and to the extent that you were ever not confused it was probably because of his insistence that I better explain what was happening. He deserves a billion and seventy thank yous.
> 
> Annnnnnd that's a wrap. In this case, our anti-heroes made it to the end.
> 
> <3


End file.
